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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   30146 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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Trump's interview with Joe Rogan is out. I think it should be mandatory viewing, as someone who has read a lot about both of them but never heard either speak at length I had some interesting surprises.

I spotted a few major pieces of culture war fodder.

  1. Joe apparently didn't want to do this because he was worried it would end up being fluff or making Trump look good.

  2. I do think it makes Trump look good. It's the beer test, implemented, and for all to see. Many people have the instant opposite visceral opinion. As with everything about this, that's interesting.

  3. Most here have concerns about legacy media, I think this adroitly makes the case against legacy media - as does Joe himself explicitly multiple times during the interview.

  4. I've polled some Kamala supporters and they all think she'd have done just as well, but I highly doubt that.

  5. Trump gets asked about election stealing...and some of his answer kinda matches some of the "best" answers we see here (complaining about procedural changes and so on).

At time of this posting it's at 18 million views in the same number of hours.

He did well, but mainly because he knows a lot about boxing and MMA and they spent half the interview talking about that, and Rogan didn't push back too hard when he kept dodging questions by going off on rambling tangents. He tried to bring him back a few times, but he would give a vague answer and then immediately veer off topic.

Harris is terrible at interviews and I don't see why she wouldn't have gone on the podcast unless she knows that.

I kinda wanted Trump to go full-bore off on that tangent about concrete because Rogan is at his best when he facilitates his guest in talking about something they know about and have enthusiasm for, and I really think Trump cares way more about concrete than he does about running the federal government.

he knows a lot about boxing and MMA and they spent half the interview talking about that

I got the impression Trump was bullshitting his way through this subject. He said nothing of substance, just mirrored and affirmed Joe.

No I don't think so at all. Trump's been showing up to boxing, pro wrestling, and MMA fights for as long as I can remember. I don't think you insert yourself (or allow yourself to be inserted) to multiple WWE storylines without at least being a casual fan. He allowed UFC events to be held in the Trump Taj Mahal when MMA became legal in New Jersey (which was the start of his long standing friendship with Dana White). Hell, he was one of the main investors in Affliction, the short lived MMA promotion that actually had quite a lot of push at the time. Famously, Josh Barnett killed the promotion by popping for steroids. Trump's definitely been a fight fan for a long time.

It could be. I know very little about it

Trump has an interest in fights (Boxing, wrestling) that stretches back decades. Even if he doesn't have technical knowledge about MMA, I believe he is genuinely interested in it.

He brought up quite a bit independently, including specific details, which were mostly affirmed by Joe.

I get the impression that you want to see Trump as having bullshitted his way through.

One of the things that I found interesting was Joe talking afterwards about how he couldn't pin Trump down. It makes sense! He's a good interviewer, politicians in general and Trump in particular manage to dodge and weave - but Joe makes it explicit.

And I think we spend a lot of time Monday morning quarterbacking communication and would do no better without additional training or something.

I’ve never been able to get into podcasts, but I actually found this engaging. Part of it might’ve just been the week long hype cycle. When it first got announced Trump was gonna be on JRE, it legit had me soy facing.

Now will this move the needle? I’m not sure. I find Trump entertaining but for people more ambivalent, I feel like this may have just come across as more of the same Trump who is already a known quantity.

I watched all of it, and the interview was highly inconsistent with the narratives that either Trump is Hitler or Trump is senile. The interview made Trump seem joyful. Funny to think back to the TV show NewsRadio (yes, I'm old) and consider that the actor playing the station mechanic played a key role in an US presidential election by interviewing Donald Trump.

I don't watch too much of the election stuff, but when I see clips of Trump doing the speeches or interviews, I always notice this - he's loving what he's doing. He likes to speak to the audience, he has a good time doing it, and it can be seen. He can shoot breeze for 3 hours and he's enjoying it. Politicians are professional bloviators, but I haven't seen many of them that have the same quality. It looks effortless when he's doing it. I don't think Harris has this quality.

Harris was apparently pretty good at confidently saying nothing substantial back in the day, according to what Harmeet Dhillon said during her TC interview. Wasn't known for stumbling over her tongue..

Dhillon met her in San Francisco, Kamala was self assured and cool meeting people. Something happened to her since then.

she probably does very well among her typical crowd, the struggle looks like trying to avoid saying things that would trigger the wider public.

Yes, she can prepare the word salad and serve it, but you can't survive 3 hours on that. You can't survive any serious amount of time, and not with a counterparty that might call you on that. And she seems to be either incapable or under severe prohibition from talking about anything genuinely and on substance.

As for what happened to her - maybe deep inside she realizes the same thing many of us realize - she has no business being where she is, and it wasn't her decision to be there, she didn't earn any of it and she's there only because some other people are using her, blowing her up like a frog with a straw. That can't be a comfortable feeling. People may hate Trump as much as they want, but I think even his enemies believe Trump does things that Trump wants to do. Even for his enemies - you can't think he's a future Hitler and also think he's a nobody that has nothing of his own. He's a figure. Harris isn't. She never won anything on strength of her achievements, and without the vast party machine she's nobody. I can't know if she realizes it, but if she does, that certainly can't be comforting.

I tend to suspect that she’s doing word salads because she’s afraid to simply say what she actually thinks. Probably her handlers are worried that her actual opinions will turn off a part of the electorate. If she says anything substantial about Israel, she’s either going to lose the woke left (who are so pro-Palestine that a good number seem okay with Hamas) or she says something pro-Palestine and loses most of the evangelical vote (because to a good lot of them even mild criticism of Israel is blasphemy in the sense that they think God backs Israel). So in that case you don’t want to forthrightly answer the question. Now a good politician would say something like:

”We support a peace with strength in the region and we’re working with both Israel and our Allies in the region to secure that peace. Until then we are working with international partners to supply humanitarian aid to the people displaced by the conflict.”

This is, quite clearly, a nonanswer. There’s not much in the statement that can be construed as supporting either side. It’s simply a wish for a strong and lasting peace and support for displaced civilians.

Her word salads seem like they’re trying to do the same thing. She’s trying to come up with a statement that sounds convincing but doesn’t give any substantial, tangible information that can be used against her. Her problem is that she’s not particularly good at it. Probably because she’s actually spent most of her political career in state politics that didn’t need that skill as much. Her opinions would be pretty standard in big city California, so she could just say what she thinks without too much difficulty. Very few in California are pro-Israel or anti-abortion, so she can just give an opinion.

If she says anything substantial about Israel, she’s either going to lose the woke left (who are so pro-Palestine that a good number seem okay with Hamas) or she says something pro-Palestine and loses most of the evangelical vote (because to a good lot of them even mild criticism of Israel is blasphemy in the sense that they think God backs Israel).

I think you're spot on with regards to what's happening with Kamala's thought process and agree with the rest of your post, but I just can't believe that she cares that strongly about the evangelical vote. Last I checked the evangelicals were almost as devoted to Trump as black men are to the democrats, and support for Israel's genocide is a massive enthusiasm-killer on the left. I think she is unable to credibly move left on this issue, but I can't believe that the tiny share of the evangelical vote she's trying for is the reason. The deep state, wealthy donors and lobbying/interest groups seem to me like they'd have far more influence over who she does or does not try to offend.

Not evangelicals, necessarily, but there are others to convince. Moderate and liberal Christians and Jews might be turned off by a strong anti-Israel sentiment. There’s also the conservatives who are leaning against Trump, who are probably pretty easy to alienate since they’re already holding their nose to even consider a Kamala vote. She’s kinda in a hard spot. Going left will break off the conservatives who don’t like Trump. Going too far right means her left wing either stays home or votes Jill Stein. Hence the nonsense answers.

yes this is what i think, she is trying to pre-filter her output in real time out of concern that it would be offputting to various segments of the public

Yeah, News Radio is very surreal when rewatched knowing where Joe's career went.

Especially the episode where Joe (temporarily) went on the air.

In 1995 when NewsRadio first aired, Trump had just lost his casinos in a billion dollar business bankruptcy. It’s wild to think Joe Garelli’s actor interviewing someone similar to billionaire radio boss Jimmy James* might be the most consequential media event of the twenty-first century.

* Jimmy James’ actor, comedian Stephen Root, refers to his character as “Trump-like” in this Uproxx intervew from 2020

Yeah, Jimmy James was definitely quite a character! I still am amazed that Stephen Root is the voice of Bill Dauterive from king of the hill! That blew my mind when I made the connection.

This is the key thing. There’s no way to reconcile the presentation on here with any mainstream narratives about him unless he’s also the world’s greatest and most restrained actor as well.

Trumps not hitler. Trumps not a wannabe dictator (sorry @Amadan). Trumps not senile. Trumps not a dimwitted lazy slob whose world view comes from watching cable news all day. Trumps not a paper thin egotist who doesn’t really like America or hold policy positions. Trumps not a phony fake executive who can’t actually think business.

But also Trumps not a genius. Trumps not a conservative. Trumps not a particularly visionary thinker or populist leader.

That leads to the obvious question: What is Trump?

A 90s pre-NAFTA Democrat who survived to the current day in his old age.

As the line says, you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villian.

He’s a showman and a patriot.

He’s the reincarnation of PT Barnum, running a rally at Barnum’s own Madison Square Garden. He’s a dealmaker from Queens. He’s someone who took the silver spoon he was given and made the most of it. He’s the average non-ideological American who never really thought about partisan politics until it started affecting him.

He’s a husband and father whose family saw him almost get killed several months ago.

He’s a political moderate who came in as an outsider at a time when Americans wanted an outsider and Bernie had been taken down by the ultimate insider, “Crooked Hillary” Clinton. He’s an anti-woke political moderate who’s seen the beast from the inside, and wants another stab at its blackened heart. He’s the kind of man who believes in strength and power and expects to be lauded for using them for common-sense win-win goals. He’s the kind of American the founders imagined standing next to kings and holding his own.

When everyone else is playing chess, he’s prepping a pro-wrestling move that’ll knock the board over. If Ted Cruz is Batman, Trump is Superman.

He’s someone who took the silver spoon he was given and made the most of it.

Huh? You're talking about a man with ~6 corporate bankruptcies. He made the worst of the several hundred million dollars he inherited.

He also had four years of control of America’s executive branch and armed forces, at the time an exclusive club of 45 men throughout history. A quarter of Americans would willingly fight and die to return him to that control, were cheating provable. That’s riches.

He became a demagogue and rabble-rouser, and rode that to being a poor/mediocre president. I don't think that's related to his silver spoon, or making the most of it.

I don't think among the superheroes Trump is a Superman. Superman is a Lawful Good with both qualities dialed to 11. Trump is more like Chaotic Good.

One consistent thing about Trump is that he's of the belief that America has been getting a bad deal internationally and has had poor leadership. You can see this back in the 80's when he was on late night talk shows complaining about America's standing relative to Japan.

He's my model of Trump:

He's a uniquely talented bullshitter who is also uniquely able to withstand a level of criticism and scorn which would break almost anyone.

He is above average intelligence, but certainly not extremely book smart. His energy and extroversion stats are maxxed out.

His intuitions are incredibly strong and he can't be fooled by other people's bullshit. So he often arrives intuitively at the correct conclusion (build the wall) long before others catch up using rational arguments. He actually is a talented negotiator.

In terms of motivations, he mostly wants personal glory, but he also loves America, and humanity more broadly. He wants peace and prosperity.

He's a bad coalition member. He won't play nice with the other kids unless he is the unquestioned leader. In 2017, he had an opportunity to bow to the uniparty in exchange for social acceptability, but he refused.

He's bad at making a plan and sticking to it. He mostly just goes with his gut, and that's worked for him so far, but it makes him an ineffective executive compared to someone like DeSantis.

This jives with my more general model of him:

He's basically a creature acting on instincts evolved over decades in one of the most competitive and cut-throat environments on the planet: New York Real Estate Development.

His long term survival in such an environment is proof positive that he is good at 'what he does.'

This is a refutation of the "4-D Chessmaster" model that nonetheless respects the fact that Trump is like a shark. Senses honed for finding blood in the water, efficiently targeting weakened prey, and killing and consuming them quickly. Every move is simply based on the innate drive for survival. No strategic thinking necessary. Also like a shark, he doesn't tend to maintain alliances very long, he goes off on his own inevitably.

Thus, even if Trump isn't a 'brilliant tactician' he can still perform well enough against a fractured, weakened, and incredulous enemy that tries to model him as a more standard threat.

It worked so well for him for so many years, it did not take much adaptation to bring it into the political arena, and it turns out that politicians themselves were ripe prey, and they simply haven't adapted to this new type of predator.

Eventually something will come along that is either purpose built to beat a Trumpian candidate, or that has honed insticts that effectively counter him, and THAT will be the new apex predator.

FWIW I watched that recent Vince McMahon documentary and I got the exact same sense from him. I also get this sense from Elon Musk, but with a bit more strategic thinking afoot there.

Creatures that have almost no real 'existence' beyond their drive to compete and win at whatever game they've chosen. Their entire persona is in service of that goal at all times. Trying to understand who they 'really' are misses the point.

This seems exactly right and I dunno from this if you're voting for him or not, so maybe it's a characterisation people on both sides can agree to. I also agree that a new apex predator will emerge (the Marlo to his Stringer Bell) but the interesting thing is what they will have had to go through to be sharpened into such a new variety of shark. Although I really cannot see Musk as commanding much authority with either ordinary people or non-SV elites, I do think Silicon Valley could produce the right combination of brutal drive combined with (lying) idealistic rhetoric. There would need to be an extra ordeal or formative chapter in a candidate's background though for them to reach a broader audience. Vance in theory has both though I feel like he's speedrun poverty and tech too quickly to be adequately honed by either.

I disagree re Musk. The man has run several companies and has managed to build all of them to be successful, he’s created new technologies that weren’t even on the table before he showed up. Nobody in 2010 thought that you could reuse the launch phase of a rocket. Musk figured that out and can actually have one caught in midair at this point. He’s dreaming the future, except that when Musk says he wants to see it, it stands an above average chance of happening. You don’t think that if (when) a guy steps out of a SpaceX vehicle on friggin’ Mars that he’s not going to resonate with average people who will be seeing him as “commanding authority?” I can’t think of anything that would get blue collar voters in line like “when NASA was busy booking trips on Russian rockets, Musk went to Mars.” They like doers, big thinkers, and bold adventures.

I mean if he goes to Mars and back, then who knows. But he doesn't put people at ease and is not gifted as a communicator, so he's got quite a lot to overcome if he is going to get through all the normal gates political candidates go through (debates, speeches, interviews etc).

Vance in theory has both though I feel like he's speedrun poverty and tech too quickly to be adequately honed by either.

I, too, am curious about Vance. It is possible 4 years in the White House will sharpen him even further.

I personally expect something new and 'interesting' to pop out of the Democratic party, eventually, their best hope is someone that can keep the social justice wing satisfied while also restoring populist appeal, I think, and that's going to take a unique set of traits, similar but not identical to what Obama brought to the table.

They won't be a 'standard' politician and will have a unique background, though, I can predict that.

Who is Atlas?

At this point, I think, it doesn't matter who he really is: the hyperreal personae that the partisan public impose on him are more compelling than the authentic human being beneath it all.

Here's a link to the podcast on youtube.

Go ahead and watch at 1.25 speed. I’m glad I did.

At time of this posting it's at 18 million views in the same number of hours.

Plus Spotify -- the reach of Rogan is just wild.

I just said the other day I was feeling lukewarm on Trump. But now I'm feeling different. I thought the podcast was awful. Couldn't make it past ten minutes. I might have to try again now that people say the first hour was rough.

It was Trump rambling at its worst. Rogan asks about winning the race in 2016, and next thing I know Trump is talking about how Lincoln was melancholy instead of depressed, cuz his kid died.

Sometimes I feel I would love Trump if it weren't for Trump.

It's not a good interview. Trump is a very boring person to listen to. It would be more interesting if someone who knew more about politics and economics would interview him and challenge more of his assertions, but that might just get hostile and he might refuse to answer. He used every opportunity to go off topic and avoid answering direct questions.

Here's Cenk Uyger's take, which seems pretty positive for someone who pretty clearly isn't suffering from pro-Trump derangement.

De gustibus nil est disputandum. shrug

It's a bit spooky how much he's being glazed up-thread.

Some of this is just ridiculous.

The thread you linked has people describing an inflection point where Red Tribe gets enough of a breach in the establishment firewall to actually have a go at producing good things outside the stranglehold of the present consensus. It's obviously quite optimistic; I think it's a reasonably open question whether optimism is inherently ridiculous at this late date.

The more probable outcome is that no matter who is declared the winner, trust declines precipitously, possibly to the point that credit cards stop working. I observe that there are multiple forms of doom converging rapidly on our present position, most of which even people here show no awareness of. Rockets and unrestrained Can-Do might thread the needle. It seems unlikely to me that your general prescriptions can. Or maybe I'm wrong; how does the future go in your view?

Some people will cling to the counterfactual no matter how aggressively the world beats them over the head.

Wishful thinkers tend to reinforce each other.

No idea whether it's the case though. I couldn't bring myself to watch that Interview.

I’m not Trump fan, or a Rogan guy. I thought the first twenty minutes were pretty tedious. But it gets much much better. It is actually quite enjoyable and insightful. I am saying this as a guy who has only ever sat through 1 other full Rogan show and never listened to a trump speech I. Full outside of a debate.

He does very well, his style works well in this format and once you settle into his ideoayncracies he’s still long winded , but it is very clear that he stays on topic in a particular way. He answers a lot of important questions that reveal his way of thinking. And there’s also a lot of fluff.

My favorite part was trump not really being interested in Joes alien obsession.

Joe asked Trump how he felt when he entered the White House on his first day. Trump tells a story about seeing the Lincoln Room and having the reality of the presidency set in. He saw all the details of Lincoln’s real life, like the bed that was custom-made because he was too tall, and the small photo he kept of his son who tragically died. Lincoln was no longer a mythical figure but a real person, who lived in this real room, occupying the same job as himself.

I guess this is rambling but at what point is rambling just good story-telling? I mean, Homer rambled. Trump talks like a wise old East Coast relative who has lots of good stories. I also think there’s an element of Irish American conversational style he inherited from his mother’s side. Trump’s mom was born in the Outer Hebrides in a Gaelic speaking household, people forget this.

Trump’s mom was born in the Outer Hebrides in a Gaelic speaking household, people forget this.

I posted a comment the other day about the impressive social skills and conversational abilities of my grandmother and her brother's amazing storytelling ability. Her entire family and that of most of the people in the community she grew up in were from the Outer Hebrides. Many of them, including their parents, spoke Gaelic as a first language.

It might be worth noting that she was known for making things up if it made for a better story.

It’s funny — during the interview Trump basically admitted to bullshitting to make the story a bit better.

I mean, Homer rambled.

Did he? I've only read him in translation, but he's never seemed particularly rambly to me.

The list of ships is some of the most rambling verse I've ever read.

This is a little bee in my bonnet for me, but the more I read about Ancient Greece, the more I agree with my old Classics prof claiming the list of ships was in a way the most important part of the Iliad. Not to us, of course, but to the Greeks that list of ships was how each city and region could claim its connection to the political founding myth of Greek civilization. Think of it less like part of the narrative and more like Revolutionary War memorials in New England towns.

I had a teacher assert something similar. That naming of people and households was important because the people listening to the story could claim some of those were their ancestors. So there ends up being 1000+ named people almost all of whom are (from a narrative point of view) pointlessly mentioned in passing.

And that teacher claimed a bit of improvisation in oral retellings was allowed. An ancient bard or traveling storyteller could add in a few mentions to local families. As though their ancestors were battling at Troy.

Rather off topic, but is that why there are a lot of genealogical texts in the Bible? It seems like a similar idea a way to connect all the places that exist. Or maybe I’m not understanding something.

The Bible is like this because a lot hinges on the descent of the person in question from the right person. Shower thought: why is the term "Y-chromosomal Adam" and not "Y-chromosomal Noah"?

My understanding is that the genealogical passages are about establishing Jesus as the descendant of David. But I'm not an expert and I could well be mistaken.

More comments

That's an interesting concept. When you say important, do you mean narratively important, culturally important, or something else?

I think what my prof was saying was "important to the average Greek listening to the Iliad." It's the bridge between the distant characters of the Iliad and the flesh and blood, the soil and city of the audience. Maybe a mild exaggeration given the different ways passages can be important, but imo a reasonable argument nonetheless.

Knowing the names of my five ancestors aboard the Mayflower, listening for their names during a Thanksgiving narrative is more exciting.

I would certainly not describe the Iliad or the Odyssey as 'rambling'. They're extremely well-honed texts, refined over generations of repetition and modification.

I suppose you could consider Homeric Simile to be somewhat rambly? Or the extensive repetitions? It's not how I'd see it, but Homer isn't exactly concise and rigorously structured.

Man I had the opposite reaction to this. Trump was telling the story of his first night staying in the White House, and sharing some of the feelings he was having while standing in the Lincoln Bedroom.

I thought it was a very humanizing story. Trump has kids who he seems to really care about (he talks about them a lot), and he seemed to be connecting how depressed the Lincoln’s were at the loss of their son.

I thought that was a really great story and was one of my favorite moments from the episode.

Whether you liked the story or not (I did not). It was the most rambly part of the interview. It was the only part where Joe got impatient. After this the conversation settled down quite a bit

I listen to podcasts all the time, including Joe Rogan's. I mainly listen to comedian podcasts. I think they tend to have the best economy of words. Even if they are idiots most of the time, they at least know how to tell a good story and make it entertaining.

To be fair, comedians literally have as a job description "tell narratively-interesting and humorous stories in as economical, effective, and entertaining a manner as possible." It's useful for politicians to also have this skill, but they're not as hyper-selected for this trait as comedians.

Trump just naturally learned to be charismatic. Trump is very flawed, but I found it interesting how Rogan as a comedian saw and respected Trump's oratory. The timing, the way to hold a crowd. It's great when people see something in their own craft in the craft of others.

I think it helps if you try not to parse it like high density scientific style communication (much of the diet of most people here) or usual focused politician/PR boilerplate.

It's more like two guys smoking weed and shooting the shit, but one of them has to periodically say some campaign related bullcrap.

It's all over the place, Trump goes on these asides, but I was enthralled with the first ten minutes or so - it's easy to listen to, shockingly focused for his reputation, and charismatic as hell (this is coming in as someone who hasn't really heard him do anything long form before).

My suspicion is that most of the people here who didn't like it were already pretty anti-Trump or very logic brained. Both of those are totally fine, but it's worth considering a more "typical" person might be more directly buying what he's selling here. This is very much one of the ways high end charisma can manifest itself, and in one of Joe's post-game type things he even talks about how hard it is wrangle Trump, which is interesting given how proficient of an interviewer JR clearly is.

I listen to a bunch of podcasts. Joe Rogan is probably in the top ten. But everyone above him that I listen to are also comedians and guys just shooting the shit. Matt and Shane's, Tim Dillon, Two bears one cave, Flagrant (which i think had trump too?), Stavy's world, etc.

I think I was more annoyed because I like listening to Joe Rogan. I tend to not like guests that speak over and monopolize the conversation. They are on the "Joe Rogan Experience", not the "Guests of Joe Rogan". The whole point of the podcast is that an everyday man is injected into this position of having a conversation with important, famous, and knowledgeable people. It ruins the ambiance to just talk over him.

Probably should have realized this would be my reaction. I couldn't watch much of his convention speech either. Got like 5 minutes in and quit.

I'm not saying this as someone that is very anti-trump. It would be nice to like trump. He appeals to some of my contrarian instincts. I just also have standards of entertainment. He talked about the apprentice a bit in the beginning as well. I was never interested in that show. Maybe its like many other fads, I'm just the wrong target audience. Whether the fad is MAGA or TDS, I'm just missing out. I don't get it.

Interesting. Again I don't think it's invalid to not be about Trump, but I did find it very entertaining - Joe is a great interviewer but it felt like he was on the Trump ride and at times sitting there going "wow." The anecdote about the Lincoln bedroom isn't particularly interesting, but the fact that it was Trump saying it and the way he said it was.

If I want to hear about the technical details of Space X I want an engineer, if I want to hear Elon do his thing I want to hear Elon. Talking over Joe, being hard to pin down. That's part of the Trump experience.

And again, no problem if you don't like that or aren't about it in this situation because you want to see Joe nail him down on the JFK stuff.

From a campaign perspective you have Trump sitting down and seeming more or less normal, with it (despite media push about that) and reasonable (despite reputation about that) for multiple hours.

Someone else called it relatively boring but if I'm Trump that's what I want to be here given that so many people have heard me called senile Hitler.

Also for what it's worth I know some people who have met him, and this interview matches what casual interactions with him are supposedly like. Don't know if there is anything else under the hood however.

I listen to a bunch of podcasts. Joe Rogan is probably in the top ten.

If yoh listen to dozens of podcasts but can't listen to Trump talking about the Lincoln bedroom... it sounds like you like slop. I guess that's your perogative.

  • -24

it sounds like you like slop. I guess that's your perogative.

This is pointless antagonism. It adds nothing but heat to the conversation. Your AAQCs get you some leeway, but that leeway is not infinite.

Three day ban.

Joe apparently didn't want to do this because he was worried it would end up being fluff or making Trump look good.

Joe said in the interview that he knew he wanted to do the interview as soon as Trump got shot. He goes on to say he wanted to wait for dramatic timing.

Well, he certainly got the timing right.

I'm pretty amazed at Trump's campaign to be honest. Recruiting Elon Musk, RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard and now finally getting Rogan onside (debatable as it's not an endorsement, but the outcome is the same as if it was).

And these are real investments into Trump's success, not just your usual 'celebrity endorses politician' article that is quickly forgotten. I never thought I'd see Elon (awkwardly, as is his way) holding townhalls around the country to promote a politician.

Overall, this is a really interesting election year that is probably only overshadowed by 2016 for craziness.

Overall, this is a really interesting election year that is probably only overshadowed by 2016 for craziness.

Right, when people say they've been especially exhausted by this election cycle, I have to wonder what they were doing 8 years ago. That one was crazy because no one liked Trump. No one with any respectable position in pop culture was willing to openly hope for his victory. It seemed his only supporters were anons and the denizens of flyover country, who all did their best to make the movement very unseemly. And then he won! My sister texted me that night telling me she was crying. I told her she needed to chill big time (and I was right).

This time he's got Zuck calling him a badass and Reddit's ultimate hero-turned-villain Elon Musk basically campaigning for him. JFK's nephew?! Scorned former Democrat (and woman) Tulsi Gabbard? Sure your open support will leave your professional friends sputtering, but this time around you do have some modest cover under the support of these guys.

Maybe that does make it crazier than 8 years ago? I don't know.

Right, when people say they've been especially exhausted by this election cycle, I have to wonder what they were doing 8 years ago. That one was crazy because no one liked Trump

Speaking from a purely entertainment standpoint, it was much easier to root for Trump in 2016 because no one liked him. It almost felt like a movie, where Trump went around and beat down all of the Republican candidates before fighting the final boss. Also, 2016 Trump was a much more fun, energetic, and clever Trump. A lot of the quips he made off the cuff in the debates were legitimately genius. Also, him gimmicking every one of his opponents (Lyin' Ted, Little Marco, Crooked Hillary) was really fun (Cacklin' Kamala was literally so easy). This time, there's no underdog story because he's already won. He's much slower mentally. He's also much less energetic. In 2016, the Republican debates were legitimately riveting television. There weren't any debates in 2024. The magic is just not all there. It's like if they did a remake of a beloved childhood film. It looks like the film everyone knows and loves, but there's just something missing.

I have to wonder what they were doing 8 years ago. That one was crazy because no one liked Trump. No one with any respectable position in pop culture was willing to openly hope for his victory. It seemed his only supporters were anons and the denizens of flyover country, who all did their best to make the movement very unseemly.

That honestly doesn't sound worrying if I completely ignore hindsight. Why would you exhaust yourself over some puffed up nobody who's going to go down in history as the other candidate when the first woman president was elected?

Eight years later, he has the weight of history behind him.

At time of this posting it's at 18 million views in the same number of hours.

18 million hours? Jesus Christ, that was before Jesus Christ!

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

I mean... technically still a valid statement, right?

Sorry that was in subjective hours as experienced by Hillary Clinton being forced to listen to Trump. I apologize for my lack of clarity.

I watched the whole thing. The first hour was a bit hard to get through due to Trump being Trump and 'weaving' some long monologues or rehashing the same tired material we've heard before.

After that though, there were quite a few pieces that I found interesting.

  1. I really liked when Trump would bring up something that he was clearly knowledgeable about such as regulations and their effects on businesses. His explanation about how environmental consultants (and some lawyers) are incentivized to drag out Environmental Impact Statements and the like, reflects what I've seen about some of this in the real world.

  2. He seemed to be pro-nuclear and particularly pushing for Small Modular Reactors over (more complex) Large Nuclear Reactors.

  3. He's clearly got a Principal level understanding of the building industry. Actually it was his aside into how building commissioners would ask him to tear something down if it wasn't built to spec that did this (as well as how he stopped himself going into detail about modern construction materials like reinforced concrete). All this knowledge is great when you want new infrastructure to be built. He can sniff out bullshit when people tell him what can and can't be done.

  4. I found it amazing that Trump was really nonplussed when Rogan emphatically described how the media and deep state elements had unfairly crucified him. He reacted like he'd been told the sky is blue. He really must just have that baked into his world view by now.

  5. He really doesn't care about aliens. At all. He seemed to find them so boring it was palpable, while Rogan was wild eyed talking about them.

  6. It was hilarious how they pretended they haven't been trash talking each other in the past. Bridges have been mended it seems.

  7. The message is the medium. I mean that in the sense that Trumps ability to do an unscripted 3hr conversation will stand well in comparison to Harris who couldn't do Rogan due to 'scheduling conflicts'.

  8. I don't know how many new voters this will win over. To be honest I can't see a lot of normies making it through the full 3 hours. The bite sized clips of the interesting parts (JRE clips) will likely be a lot more influential.

After the McDonalds something-burger (heh), this podcast and Kamala's recent lackluster performance, I'm predicting a Trump win at around 55-60% certainty.

you might have the meaning of nonplussed backward - if so its a common mistake no biggie just wanted to mention in the spirit of being helpful

edit: oh no apparently now the dictionary says that in "north america" it can informally mean its opposite now. i guess i'm too late.

Wait, what? When did that change happen? The parent comment to this one is the first time I can remember seeing it used in the informal North American sense, and until reading your edit, I assumed CertainlyWorse got it wrong as well.

i think people who learn it by osmosis through reading often think it means something like unphased, and now enough have used it that way that it's officially a definition. i think i'm fine with it, not a linguistic prescriptionist

it means something like unphased

I think you mean unfazed here.

unphased

ha you're right, bit of an ironic blunder there

nonplussed

Interesting. I've always used it in the North American sense, which is weird because I'm usually a stickler for using the Queen's English.

the Queen's English

I’ve got some bad news for ya bud…

(Well I suppose you didn’t specify the Queen Regnant’s English so…)

Old habits die hard. Elizabeth was much more likeable.

Hasn’t every King Charles dissolved parliament? I’d be rather disappointed if this Charles breaks tradition.

Even if normies can only get through 15-20 minutes, for a voter who gets their information about only the most outrageous and bifurcating statements, any exposure to humanize himself is an incredibly positive move. Going on the podcast circuit was a genius idea supposedly pushed by Baron, and this type of forward thinking really sets himself as a trendsetter instead of an evil bogeyman. It's much harder for the media to discredit his personality when there's a 3-hour long form podcast, even if the interview is fairly benign compared to the interviews by legacy media.

I slightly agree with number 8, at this point the battlelines are largely drawn. I voted before the interview even came out.

Also, I'd like to point that the 18 million views with Rogan is just on Youtube. This doesn't include Spotify or any other media platform where this interview may have been shared.

I actually think 2 - 3 hours of Rogan (or day-time tv) is the "normie" attention span as evidenced by his podcast's reach as well as that of others like the Kelce brothers. 2 -3 hours is also the typical run-time of football or baseball game.

IMO, the extremely-online trying to dunk on "normies" for an alleged lack of attention-span reads more like projection than anything else.

Meanwhile Kamala Harris apparently declined to go on Rogan even though she was in Houston.

What was she doing in Houston? Rallying with Beyonce, of course. According to the Harris team, over 1.5 million people registered to attend although there was only space for 30,000. Passionate Harris fans? Hardly. They thought there would be a Beyonce concert.

When Beyonce did not in fact perform, but just mumbled into a bad mic, the fans were not happy. They came to see Queen Bey, not Queen K. There's a viral TikTok clip of people booing and Kamala cackling awkwardly for like 45 seconds.

https://pagesix.com/2024/10/26/entertainment/beyonce-fans-furious-singer-did-not-perform-at-kamala-harris-rally-in-houston/

Seriously people, how hard is it to get Beyonce to perform? No one gives a damn about the endorsements of celebrities, but they might just vote the way you want if you give them a free concert. Tickets to Beyonce are hundreds of dollars. It's a nice vote-buying technique unless you blow it massively.

Seriously people, how hard is it to get Beyonce to perform?

As hard as Beyonce wants it to be. She sets her own price.

I'm curious if it's genuinely a matter of price. The Harris campaign is rolling in dough, and spending it in much worse ways. If it were worries about getting tied to a sinking ship, the endorsement is enough of an albatross.

My first thought is that there's some process limitations that make it hard to get done so quickly. There's reasons charity concerts after disasters often take the better part of a month if not months to assemble: planning properly for a 10k+ person assembly is a nightmare, and converting one type of assembly into another doesn't buy anywhere near the sort of stability you'd hope for.

But I have seen that sorta thing move faster before, and Harris (surrogates) have been motioning around it as long as there's been a Harris campaign. So I dunno.

I think it comes down to Beyonce doesn't want to do it.

Why? I don't know. Speculation? They don't see themselves as circus clowns for whatever the Democratic candidate of the day is. They truly believe in themselves as black royalty. (Which others, like the NFL, seem to agree with)

When it comes to the black elite, it's them and...people allied to them. There's no hostile Elon Musk-style billionaires on the other side. They're the top of the layer cake and have a monopoly on "celebrities who can mobilize black voters" or, more cynically, "celebrities white female staffers believe can mobilize black voters".

They might be willing to take a somewhat deferential stance towards Barack Obama, but he actually was the first black president and actually did win his elections before retiring to make enough money to be in their tax bracket. He can be primus inter pares.

Kamala Harris is no Obama.

Beyonce doesn't actually need to dance around for her and it's somewhat demeaning for there to be an expectation that she has to (for a person that doesn't even deign to give interviews anymore, so certain is she in her cultural cachet) so Kamala can salvage a campaign event. She's Queen Bey after all, her laying hands on Kamala should achieve the goal of telling her people who to vote for. She did Kamala - and the Democrats - a favor already.

There's nothing odd about this: Anne Hathaway and Scarlett Johannsen support Democrats but don't have to do soliloquys for whoever the Democrats randomly picked to lead them. They give an endorsement and the party is happy to get that much.

Leave that the dancing bear behavior to the Meg Thee Stallions of the world. She's still hungry and climbing the ladder.

This is kinda off the wall, but I'm wondering if the local democrats didn't make enough problems to prevent Beyonce from performing? The Harris county democrats are at least partly(but not entirely) tied to/infiltrated by the state level GOP and it's entirely plausible that this is a cheap favor by democrats for Ted Cruz.

Sounds like her endorsement doesn’t mean much.

It's a nice vote-buying technique unless you blow it massively.

Maybe they didn't want to be accused of doing such?

They got Bruce Springsteen to perform at another rally. They got Willie Nelson to perform at the not Beyoncé concert. They are openly asking for Swift to perform at one of these rallies.

The reason Beyoncé didn’t perform is because Beyoncé didn’t want to perform. But Harris stupidly ran a bait and switch.

I doubt it considering all the other naked vote buying.

I predict that in 2028 the Democratic nominee will leverage concerts a lot more effectively. It's the $20 bill just sitting on the sidewalk for the taking. It's a massive advantage for Democrats since most of the top stars are aligned with Dems.

It's kinda like Elon's lottery except that instead of just one winner there will be tens of thousands.

I wonder if there are FEC limits on it

How? I’m not sure paying people to be at a rally by booking a band translates to votes. She might be able to buy large rally crowds, but she’s not going to be able to convince them to vote for her. They often don’t actually stay for the rally part (actually quite surprised they haven’t noticed and moved the concert until after the rally).

Can you share the viral clip?

Here's the one linked in the article, but I've also seen it on Twitter. https://tiktok.com/@hunterbidenslaptop4.0/video/7430049960197967146

To Kamala's credit, I'm not sure what a person's supposed to do when they're being booed. This is probably as good as anything.

I'm by no means a fan of Donald Trump, and if I was an American citizen there's no question in my mind that I would've voted for Hillary in 2016. But regardless of my opinion of Trump's politics, his authoritarian tendencies, his disregard for principles, his emotional incontinence etc., credit where credit is due - the man is a remarkably compelling public speaker. I watched the first ten minutes of the podcast, having never watched Joe Rogan before, and I was riveted. People used to say that Johnny Cash could read the phonebook and make it interesting - I think I could listen to Trump go off on weird tangents about his real estate ventures and Lincoln for an hour and not feel like my time was wasted. This is not the rambling of a senile old man suffering from the onset of dementia: this is an extremely practiced, keenly honed skill. He knows exactly what he's doing.

Obviously the job of being a compelling public speaker and the job of being President are very different things, and I am confident that skill in the former is only very weakly correlated with skill in the latter. But to the extent that it's correlated at all - well, it's a skill that Trump and Obama have, Kamala and Hillary don't have, and that Biden probably had at one point but no longer has. Kamala appearing on the Rogan podcast would have been an awkward, unproductive and uncomfortable experience for everyone involved, and I'm sure everyone involved knows this, up to and including Kamala herself. If Kamala's campaign manager had made an appearance on the podcast, he or she would have come off better than Kamala herself.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

As a point of fascination with Trump I'm not really sure if he knows exactly what he's doing or he's just an entity who has gone through enough selection pressure to emerge as a thing that naturally does this kinda stuff.

I haven't listened to anything long form and uninterrupted from Trump in a while (I watched most of the debates and some Trump clips), so what instantly struck me was just how fake the "Trump is old and incoherent just like Biden was" narrative is. I already thought it was a bad narrative and this really cemented that thought in my head. Trump is aware of the way he goes on conversational detours and actually says it is one of his strengths, so he clearly does it intentionally unlike with Biden's gaffes. He called it "the weave" and says it's the mark of a good speaker if they can weave multiple different things together but still come back home at the end. I found this all amusing to listen to even if I didn't 100% agree about the weave being the mark of good oration.

I also watched the recent Theo-Vance podcast and what I found notable was Vance on the election. When asked, Vance says the biggest problem in 2020 was big tech bias and the Hunter Biden laptop story, but that he still thinks voting is fair. When Trump was asked, he "weaved" together an answer that involved various vote by mail problems and law changes he thinks were done wrong, date changes, voter ID, or just outright ballot box stuffing alongside the Vance answer of an unfair big tech.

Back to Trump, I really liked the mini deregulation theme with environmental review and permitting. I also really enjoyed when he looked off to the side and stopped himself from saying something with a big smirk on his face (maybe a slight mark against the Ezra Klein disinhibition theory?), like when he said "You know, my uncle, I had a great uncle who was a great genius just like (pause, look to the side and smile while clearly holding back a specific name of someone he was about to say) other members of my family but he was a professor at..." or when he said "I only believe them if [the polls are] good (chuckle). No, ..." all with a huge smirk knowing what he said is ridiculous.

He called it "the weave" and says it's the mark of a good speaker if they can weave multiple different things together but still come back home at the end.

Again has someone who has never heard him talk at length I was really impressed by the answer about a thing, shove in a random campaign talking point in a reasonableish way, go back to the thing.

He's clearly still very with it.

He's clearly still very with it.

This is what I've been saying for months, but there are people here who firmly insist that he's losing his grip. It's like the Shiri's scissor of this sub. Not only do I disagree with the people who say he's senile, I just can't understand where they're coming from at all. It just seems self-evident to me that Trump is still very present and energetic.

Maybe not "energetic" but agree that he's very much "with it" and so clearly so that i find it difficult to understand where the people who are calling him "rambling and incoherent" are coming from.

He even speaks in the interview about how he believes that part of being a good orator/negotiator is being able "to weave" multiple tangents together to create a desired mental/emotional state and then he goes and does it.

Are people's brains here litterally so rotten from exposure to TikTok Instagram and chat-GPT that they can't process a "brick joke" or any argument that isn't in the form of a soundbite?

The media blitz on this front has been very strong, it's tough to consistently completely disregard "experts."

My single encounter with his speeches (as I generally can't stand video/chatter content) has been a live stream of some recent rally that I only tuned into because I randomly entertained the thought of playing the Polymarket "will Trump say Border more than 25 times" game, and my immediate first impression was that he really just sounded shockingly old and tired. I don't think I got a sense of mental decline beyond what is a necessary consequence of old age, and he sounded way sharper than I remember Biden doing in the one video I saw of his fatal debate, but he certainly didn't come across as either spry or quick-witted. I don't think I have any particularly negative emotions towards him nor that he has declined to a point that would be extraordinary for a head of state, but it did seem to me like those who claim that he currently presents a picture of rhetorical brilliance and strength must be suffering from a case of reverse TDS.

The interview a big W for the Trump campaign in my opinion. The podcast has the biggest reach of any other, and more exposure the better, he didn’t blow up or look dumb, not sure there’s any undecideds left to convince but this could just be a nice reminder to Trumpy people “oh yeah there’s an election I better vote!”

I found it boring but I think that was the point. My personal desire for a 'based Trump' performance nonwithstanding, Trump's biggest problem is that he's being painted as a radical fascist demagogue: the more he can soften his image the more undecideds he can pull to vote for him.

Yeah to some extent it just seemed like two dudes talking about a bunch of random stuff with a moderate degree of intelligence. For Trump that's a big win.

The Political Horse Race Two Weeks Out

Apologies to our foreign or American friends who may be bored by the non-stop election coverage, but I just can't get enough.

A couple weeks ago I predicted with 50% confidence (the ultimate in weasly predictions) that we'd see an October surprise timed for maximum damage to the Trump campaign. I think we just saw the attempt. It was dumb as you could expect.

Yesterday, nearly every single media outlet in the country ran the same story. The story? John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, supposedly once said that Trump told him "Well, Hitler did a lot of good things". Kelly also said something about Trump praising Hitler's generals. The story was first reported in 2021. It was denied by Trump the next day.

Somehow, three years later, it was front page news in nearly every mainstream outlet. It was an incredible example of media discipline and coordination. See for yourself:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=trump%20hitler%20comments

So... did it land? No I don't think so. Comparing people to Hitler is the oldest game in the book. Does anyone remember the Lyndon Larouche campaigners with their Obama-as-Hitler posters? Moreover, we've heard everything about Trump. 99% of people have made up their mind already. And Trump is also omnipresent. Today's Hitler story is yesterday's news as Trump appears on Rogan or works at McDonald's or eats a burrito bowl or something.

Harris tried to make the story work. In between cringe videos of her latest town hall appearance, her Twitter account tweeted this:

Trump is unstable and unhinged.

If elected, his Project 2025 agenda would give him virtually unchecked power to fill the government with loyalists. There would be no one to stop him from carrying out his darkest impulses."

So how are the betting markets taking it? Well, there were a couple more flash crashes in Trump shares on Polymarket. Around midnight, his odds briefly dipped under 60%. Was it manipulation? I don't think so. To paraphrase Stanley Druckenmiller, sometimes it's better to just buy the rumor and then ask questions later. Maybe it was worth a gamble to see if the attack stuck.

As of right now, Trump is up near 65% again. Interestingly, his chances of winning the popular vote have crept up to about 40%. In polls, according to Real Clear Politics, Harris's nationwide lead has fallen to 0.3%, while Trump maintains a 0.9% edge in the seven swing states.

It really is too close to call at this point. Will we see a "real" October surprise against Trump? It feels unlikely. There just isn't any more unspent ammunition. Will the Trump campaign produce some valuable oppo research against Harris? Again, unlikely, since the media wouldn't report on it anyway.

The election is 12 days out, and many ballots have already been cast.

How did Trump's Rogan appearance hash out? I don't have the heart to listen to it; I used to really like Joe, but he's picked up too many conspiracy bugs. The parasite load is starting to show, and I'm kinda tired of hearing about vaccines and the possible dangers thereof.

To the degree I'm angry at vaccines, I'm angry that the covid vaccines DIDN'T end the pandemic.

I turned it off after about 20 minutes. Just couldn't stand Trump rambling and repeating himself. Oddly, I find those traits of his to be kind of endearing in his big public speeches, but in the context of a 1-on-1 conversation I found them to be very grating.

I don't think the interview will hurt Trump, but I also doubt it will help him. He looked and sounded like an old tired grandpa, his makeup looked weird under the lighting conditions, and he didn't say anything particularly interesting to me, at least not in those first 20 minutes. He didn't seem like the bellicose, charming, unpredictable Trump that made him famous as a politician, he seemed really tired and out of it. Maybe he should have gotten more sleep before the interview or something.

Overall, I'd say that the interview is a disappointment compared to all the hype. Basically a nothingburger. You'll probably like it if you can imagine that it would be fun to hang out 1-on-1 with a tired Trump while he freely associates about random things. Otherwise you'll likely think that it's boring.

From what I saw, Joe Rogan did fine though.

I think the interview slightly helps Trump in that it does make him seem human, not like some kind of uber-Hitler. Unfortunately for Trump, it also hurts him by making him seem really really old and unfocused. One almost wants to put him to bed and give him some nice warm tea to soothe him to sleep when one watches it. I didn't see any signs of the fiery, snarky Trump who makes people think he'll do big things if elected.

I really have no interest in hearing trump speak at length. It's a personality/communication style thing. I don't even like listening to Rogan anymore, the sorts of guests he has on have drifted away from my interests.

I'm increasingly disappointed with the state of the Republican party and the discourse around the election in general. Everyone already shoted their shoots years ago and are running on leftover fumes.

At this point, my only dog in the race is that trump winning will probably make crypto go up.

I found the Rogan interview to be pretty boring, although trumps speech to the Chicago economic club was actually pretty interesting.

I don't think I have the patience to listen to it.

I saw a 2 minute video where Rogan and Trump were talking about voter ID. Rogan was making the point that there's no good reason not to require voter ID. You need ID to buy alcohol, you need ID to drive, nearly every other country has voter ID etc... Common sense stuff. Trump should have just let him talk.

Instead, Trump kept interrupting every other word. It was painful.

It's a great interview as a long-form conversation. Rogan and Trump go down many interesting paths, and both talk uninterrupted at length at various times. If you're still living in soundbite culture, I think that reflects worse on you than the interview. People are going to be talking about this for years.

Trump has a certain impatience to him. He sees where Joe is going and then interrupts to give Trump’s view. I think that is a mistake.

I'm about halfway through -- quite a lot of just shooting the shit, some MMA, some of Trump's usual talking points. Joe is being a very sympathetic interviewer, but he did sort of push back slightly on tarriffs/taxes/environmental issues.

Pretty bland honestly -- hard for anyone to claim that Trump is mentally incompetent when he can hold down such a widely ranging three hour conversation off the cuff though.

Yeah it isn’t so far must watch interview but at the same time Trump comes across like a decent guy and clearly not mentally incompetent. My guess is this doesn’t have much of an impact but if anything it is a very small boost for Trump (eg maybe 5-10k votes). But if that small boost is in the right area it could be consequential.

The thing about the way trump talks is that, in addition to talking about what he wants to, he opens a lot of nested parentheticals within a thought. When he has room in long form like this, he will usually close most of the parentheticals back up to the main point eventually.

I still think this is frustrating and tedious, and his parentheticals are usually just free association, rather than in service to the thesis.

But it’s clearly not word salad or mental incompetence.

It’s very very far from Kamala’s inability to put together a coherent point of view on the spot

It is funny. They talk about that. Trump called it the “weave.”

It’s very very far from Kamala’s inability to put together a coherent point of view on the spot

I don't really think this is because Kamala can't form or express coherent thoughts. I think it's more that she doesn't have the experience/particular aptitude of combining her own opinion and with what's most politically savvy into an elegant response. I think her less good moments are when she's trying to come up with the perfect politician's answer, and that's not an easy skill.

Imo, the port strike would have been the October surprise since the dockworkers seemed pretty crazy, but it got resolved too quickly for people to even run lut of bananas.

There's been a few stories like that hitting /r/politics the past couple week. By "like that", I mean, some reiteration of some vague bad-mouthing of Trump over something that's not actually very important and was reported on years ago. As someone who is no fan of Trump, I also am unhappy with this news coverage, albeit for different reasons: there's actual bad things to say about Trump; no need to report on irrelevant gossip. Actually talk about his policies and fallout from what he did during his term. But news organizations don't want to do that because it involves talking about regulating business (e.g., the FDA regulating food production) in a positive light and their owners don't want that.

That’s been 9 years of that now

It’s insane

Even for paid shit

Oh, yeah, /r/politics has always had a lot of nonsense bad-mouthing of Trump. The difference I'm calling out is that the past few weeks, there's been a lot of re-runs of such stories from years ago.

News organizations absolutely want to regulate business which is one of the reasons they are in the bag for Harris. Regulatory capture is a godsend to corrupt, dying companies.

Legacy media's dream is to get X banned before it completely replaces them. Ideally, journalists would even receive state funding to spread regime propaganda more directly, removing the need for subscribers at all. Don't laugh, it's already happening in other countries.

They want more regulation and government interference, not less.

News organizations are uncomfortable with Harris, though. I’m guessing it’s because she’s economically illiterate to the point of insanity; Trump prefers a different set of trade offs than the upper middle class but seems to understand not smashing the whole thing.

It’s amazing how integrated media and corporations are as well, with their strategy to stop advertising on X as a way of crushing it. They use the excuse of “hate speech” while completely ignoring that there is the same level of heinous shit on ALL the social media apps - have they seen Tik Tok? Have they seen instagram rwcently?

Serious journalists depend on Twitter both for material and self promotion. Instagram and TikTok are for tabloid tier infotainment meaning there's very little chance of the content from those platforms polluting the memespace of serious discussions and they can be safely ignored/excluded.

I suspect this is largely because Twitter trades primarily in text and links rather than photos and video. Writing on Twitter typically has a much higher velocity, range, spread and linguistic precision than a set of photos or a linear video (hence why Insta and TikTok posts often include captions for added clarity).

I don't know if the other apps have any similar mechanisms to the retweet function. Seems like mostly all you can do is view, follow, leave a comment and smashthatlikebutton.

Instagram and TikTok are for tabloid tier infotainment meaning there's very little chance of the content from those platforms polluting the memespace of serious discussions and they can be safely ignored/excluded.

You’d be surprised how many people exclusively use TikTok instead of any other social media. There’s plenty of channels on there that offer news coverage as well. I think it plays a huge negative role in influencing the current zeitgeist and how young people especially view things, which is probably why America is banning it soon

TikTok has lots of highly engaged users but I assume they're not accomplished politicians, broadcasters, academics, and other leading figures of major social institutions. They might run a brief campaign on TikTok if their social media coordinators recommend it and then duck out again when the moment passes, they don't stay there and engage with other users as peers like they do on Twitter.

The Xwitter claim does not check out for me. Journalists continue being utterly addicted to it, and I also recall them being unconditionally defensive up until the point of the Musk takeover (which they resisted and continue to resist). If they wanted it destroyed, surely they should have supported it at the time, as it was foreseeable that it would make it less influential and make a future ban easier.

Don't laugh, it's already happening in other countries.

I'm not laughing, because it's happening here in Canada.

The federal government banned free news posts on large websites (literally just Facebook and Google). Facebook decided it didn't want to pay some unknown hundreds of millions of dollars to host paid links, so it chose to not be a Digital News Intermediary under the new regime and was therefore required to block all news links. Google negotiated an exemption for itself in exchange for $100M/yr paid to the Canadian Journalism Collective, so there are literally zero companies covered by the Online News Act.

The end result? News as a whole is worse in Canada, with smaller outlets (particularly ones that won't get funding from the CJC) hit the hardest.

They had the gall to complain about Facebook harming Canadian journalism by "not paying their fair share" and "unfairly profiting". Now that Facebook is drawing zero profit and their fair share is consequently zero, the journalists are still complaining about how harmful the ban has been. Of course, they blame Facebook for following the regulations rather than the Federal government for creating them.

Ideally, journalists would even receive state funding to spread regime propaganda more directly, removing the need for subscribers at all.

Yup: "(8)...the groups wants 70% of news costs paid for government or through government regulation." If that had actually occurred, then Canadian journalists would barely have had to provide anything, nevermind anything of real value.

So how are the betting markets taking it? Well, there were a couple more flash crashes in Trump shares on Polymarket. Around midnight, his odds briefly dipped under 60%. Was it manipulation? I don't think so. To paraphrase Stanley Druckenmiller, sometimes it's better to just buy the rumor and then ask questions later. Maybe it was worth a gamble to see if the attack stuck.

Prediction market are likely more accurate than polling. In addition to public information, prediction markets take into account variables that polls cannot readily account for, like electoral college lumpiness and turnout, as well as insider info. These tend to favor Trump, like in 2016. Or Bush in 2000. Both of whom won despite losing popular vote. So polling aggregators that give Kamala a 50% chance of winning or favorability, this translates into maybe only a 40% probability due to the aforementioned factors.

It really is too close to call at this point. Will we see a "real" October surprise against Trump? It feels unlikely. There just isn't any more unspent ammunition. Will the Trump campaign produce some valuable oppo research against Harris? Again, unlikely, since the media wouldn't report on it anyway.

I think the whole 'Trump admires dictators' story by John Kelly was the surprise, and likely a dud. It also shows how Trump cannot stop appointing people who later turn on him. Likening someone to Hitler is so unoriginal or played out it has lost any of its potency to change minds. People acknowledge that it's just hyperbole.

I mean yes. Prediction markets avoid the two biggest problems of polling. One one side, it avoids the issue of shame and embarrassment entirely. If I’m in favor of something that is unpopular, I might not tell someone especially if I’m in a situation where other people might hear it. And second, they avoid falling for zealots. If the price for Kamala gets too high, people will sell Kamala and take the cash now before the election proves them wrong.

Polling aggregators almost invariably create averages for state polling, too. The people giving probabilities, the modelers, also base their modeled outcomes off of state polls, so they're aware the Electoral College exists.

What's the actual record of prediction markets?

What's the actual record of prediction markets?

Pretty good.

Until recently, the biggest and most liquid prediction markets revolved around sports gambling. They are quite good at prediction, but skilled gamblers can do slightly better when the markets exhibit bias.

For example, if the Yankees are playing the Royals, maybe the Yankees will be favored by more than they should since there are more Yankees fans with more dollars than Royals fans.

Obviously, the more money that is involved, the better the market will be. So far, $2.4 billion has been wagered on Trump v. Harris on Polymarket.

It's hard to say because until recently they were borderline illegal and illiquid

If a “real” October surprise felt likely, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?

I laugh at the idea this is a coordinated blitz, though. It’s the most natural place for prospiracy: thousands of journalists desperate for something, anything to say about the Bad Man. One of them apparently asked him about the remarks in an interview, and it was off to the races. Even then, the results are blog columns and one-paragraph reports. It’s about as weak as it gets, and I’m confident you could find equivalent surges every month. Trump just has that effect.

ontinue being utterly addicted to it, and I also recall them being unconditionally defensive up until the point of the Musk takeover (which they resisted and continue to resist). If they wanted it de

In many cases they do use the same exact phrases in the headlines, converging on the same single words. There absolutely have to be journalist groupchats where some of the more cynical are coordinating.

Note to future confused readers - this reply appears to be an estranged response to this post.

And we had JournoList a decade ago (or whenever), it's naive to imagine that similar mailing lists haven't continued to proliferate.

I mean, I'd also laugh at the idea of it being a blitz as well. Something can't really be a blitz if it never slowed or stopped from its starting pace.

Known unknowns vs unknown unknowns.

I guess I'll just use this thread to say: I fucking hate this election.

I hate my choices. I hate having to choose which shitty option might taste slightly less like shit. I hate choosing from two stupid, bumbling mediocre embarrassments and knowing one of them is going to be the fucking President of the United States of America. "Vote for the lesser of two evils" has been a motto representing resigned acceptance of political reality my entire life (I have the Cthulhu for President t-shirt and everything), but never have I felt it so keenly. They're both bad and repulsive, and I honestly don't know which of them will actually be worse for the country because I expect either of them to be terrible. I have said before I probably won't even vote, for the first time since I turned 18. (At least for president; I'll still probably vote for local/state candidates.)

And it's entirely the fault of both parties for putting us here. The Republicans, for letting MAGA cultists take over the party and drive all serious grown-ups out, and the Democrats, for letting bad faith woke identity politics take over everything. And both of them, for turning us into a gerontocracy that very effectively shuts younger candidates out before they can even sniff a primary.

If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I guess it would be Kamala. But I might take the bullet instead.

I think Trump will be more damaging to the economy, and I think he will epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world. I think he will be an embarrassment who fails to accomplish any of the things his followers think he will (just like last time) and what he does accomplish he will fuck up. I think Harris will continue our inflationary money-isn't-real spiral into economic doom, hand out more gobs of cash to whatever identity group is most effective at yelling and screaming, and I think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will roll her like a floured chicken breast. She's a midwit mediocrity who should never have come within line of sight of the Presidency, and I cannot believe how quickly I watched people in real time shift vibes to Kamala-enthusiasm, Kamalanation, Kamala is brat (W. T. F????) and pretend they had always been enthusiastic about her. Way back in 2019, when she was being floated as a Democratic candidate and I knew little about her, I admit I was tepidly favorable towards her because she seemed like maybe the least bad of a mediocre lot, but nothing she's done since has impressed, and she seems like Generic Extruded Political Product.

But, you know, Trump. I do not have TDS, I do not think he is Literally Hitler, but I do think he's a con, a huckster, an embarrassing buffoon who I believe actually loves America as much as I believe he goes to church on Sunday and has ever read the Bible in his life. I think he totally would become an absolute dictator if he could manage it, but it would require too much effort and political acumen and cunning, which he does not have. He has a huge personality and charisma, and some people think that translates into him being a skilled politician. He's not. He's got performer's instincts and a gift for graft. This doesn't really make him unique among American presidents, but it makes him uniquely bad in this time and place.

This sucks.

So I will repeat what I said a few weeks ago: my only consolation is going to be breaking out the popcorn and watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth post-election night. If Kamala wins, I will read the Motte and other places for the rage, the futile fist-waving, the impotent Internet tough-guy promises to Res1st and Retrn and start a civil war or some shit. If Trump wins, I will read Twitter for the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, and the hordes of smug, self-righteous fucks driven to existential despair, and I will drink their tears.

This is not nice, it is not charitable, it is not noble. It is petty and mean and beneath me. It is my coping mechanism, because this election sucks.

You know, I really do feel bad for you. Moderating this place - hell, any place on the internet that explicitly sets out to encourage free discussion - is a thankless task that saps the goodwill of anyone who does it over enough time and turns them into husks. You're a much nicer and kinder person than I am who has genuine stakes in this election, so I am going to try and give you some advice. Whether you take it or not is up to you.

Don't indulge yourself in the suffering of others. Not because you're better than that, but because doing so is harmful to yourself.

Go outside, visit an old museum, someplace with art and real history. Visit a place where something that mattered happened, not to grifters and conmen but to real, living, breathing people, in a way that lasted. Go marvel at nature, go drink a good coffee made by someone who cares about their craft and think about the effort that went into bringing you that coffee in an easily digestible form, from plant to cup.

Politics is kayfabe, it isn't real. The turning of the gyre comes for everything and everyone. We've done alright so far despite the century of horrors. The moment the kayfabe breaks may be soon, but until then there's dancing, music, and banh mi. We live in the dreamtime. It'll end someday, but I'm not going to poison myself before I am poisoned at gunpoint.

I say this as one of the most blackpilled people I know. Touch grass. There, but for the grace of God, stumbles the broken ape parade.

MAGA cultists

This sort of sentiment is the issue with establishment GOP and now the never-Trumper ex-Republicans. Conservatives weren't conserving things, They were bojangling for dollars, courting their internationalist reformers, rolling back hard won wins like Newt Gingritch's welfare reforms, derangedly thinking the federal government could enable no child to be left behind, etc. They needed to be kicked in the teeth.

Trump is that kick. If he didn't exist, some other politician would have eventually discovered Pat Buchanan's writings kicked the tires on it and taken the lane. Both major parties essentially disdaining working white men was never going to be a stable equilibrium in a country that depends on that demographic for almost all of its productivity.

So what needs to happen? Adaptation. Trump wont be around forever, but JD Vance has realized what the coalition is. He knows the other party is the party of the fringes.

The Republicans, for letting MAGA cultists take over the party and drive all serious grown-ups out, and the Democrats, for letting bad faith woke identity politics take over everything.

What exactly were the Dems and GOP supposed to do about this? Candidates are selected ~democratically (I suppose it's fair to criticize the Democrats for just...skipping that step this election cycle); Trump developed a huge base in the GOP; "wokeness" has a decent base in the Democrat party. And many GOP "adults in the room" DID criticize Trump, and got ran out of the party for their troubles.

Let me try to answer my own question:

I think the effort to head off Trump needed to happen in the primaries for the 2016, and it needed to take on the form of some of those 1,492 GOP candidates dropping out earlier to consolidate the anti-Trump base of support, and it needed to take on the form of denouncing the foreign policy misadventures of the Bush-Obama years (which were becoming unpopular, but were still often not criticized in the GOP in 2016.) But it's not the fault of "the Republicans" that this happened; they couldn't force candidates to drop out on the optimal timelines any more than they could force Trump not to throw his hat in the ring.

Heading off wokeness, I think, is easier – Democrat elites could have been criticizing wokeness the same way that Republican elites often criticized Trump. But I think this risked seriously weakening the party. We see, now, that the party is critically divided over Israel/Palestine; attacking "wokeness" 4 or 8 years ago (particularly when it was on the ascent) would have run a similar risk, I think.

I guess my point here is that to the extent that it's the fault of "the Republicans" or "the Democrats" it's really just the fault of "the American people" for voting for them. Maybe this is your point.

I'm certainly interested in the potential upsides of RETVRNing to a time when the people didn't have much of a voice in major party's political choices. But until that happens, "the party" will be very much at the mercy of the voters.

What the Dems could have done about it is held their nose and refrained from ratfucking Bernie out of the nomination. But they just couldn’t stand his lukewarm populist vibes so he had to go.

I don't know why this claim keeps coming up, Bernie's path to the nomination required the rest of the pool to cooperate with him to split the vote of the majority position. When it came to having to win one on one he didn't. period. End of story. It's not ratfucking to notice you're splitting a position and stop doing that so someone with minority support who you don't agree with doesn't take the nomination.

Bernie lost his primaries fair and square. More people simply voted for Hillary, and then Biden. If he couldn’t even win a dem primary he’d been slaughtered in the general anyway.

They were using a mass coordinated media smear campaign against him just like they did with Trump later. And they weaponized the already questionable superdelegate system against him.

They 'ratfucked' him because they were fully aware a self-identified socialist would get crushed in an American election and stood the chance of poisoning their brand for an extended period of time.

As opposed to:

-The least popular candidate of the last 40 years who was selected entirely due intra-party backstabbing and seniority

-A terminally senile old man who only narrowly won due to a once in century pandemic, and then mentally flamed out so bad he had to drop out of the race

-An incoherent alcoholic apparatchik who somehow manages to be more unpopular than the 2016 candidate, who never won a primary or even placed in the top three, who only has a political career because they are good at giving head.

Gosh, it’s a good thing the Democrats didn’t get Bernie, or their reputation over these last few years might have taken quite a hit!

I would say that Bernie's ideas should have had a chance to be rejected by the electorate and consigned back to the doldrums of obscurity, but now the progressives have a bloody shirt in the form of a stab-in-the back myth that will haunt the Democratic party for generations to come.

I'm not saying they weren't arrogant about their odds the other way. But Bernie would have gotten whooped by Trump both times, just from airing commercials with him personally identifying as a socialist between the DNC and Election Day.

There's a reason Democrats pretend very hard to be moderates no matter how left wing they are.

Really? I feel like some people on the SSC subreddit said that, had it been Bernie vs. Trump, Bernie would have cleaned it up.

In addition to his general popularity with radical youth, Bernie was a candidate for the very online.

Again, they would have run ads with him calling himself a socialist, all day, every day, for six months before the election and he would have lost by 5+ points.

There was a very simple way to head Trump off at the pass; say you’re going to do something about illegal immigration, which is wildly unpopular with the body politic, and then fucking do it.

That’s it. That’s the whole game. That would have stopped Trump because he would have never developed his constituency, which wasn’t invented by him but simply ignored by both parties.

There was electoral gold in the streets just waiting to be picked up but a prospiracy driven primarily by rank class hatred blocked it. All it took was one defector.

This comparison may not generalise, but this always makes me think of the first collapse of One Nation over here.

For the unfamiliar, One Nation is/was an anti-immigrant Australian political party. It was founded in the 90s as an expression of protest over immigration, and took some bites out of the ruling centre-right Coalition's right flank. This continued... up until the Coalition adopted a hard-line policy on illegal immigration, communicated that (cf. the Tampa and Children Overboard, both in mid-2001), and by doing so completely smashed One Nation. Without their flagship issue, One Nation's other problems (corruption, incompetence, etc.) became more visible and they declined heavily.

You can defeat the populist/nativist surge - you just have to address the issues that are motivating them.

(One Nation have made a post-2016 comeback, rebranding as a more generic far-right or nationalist party. In the 90s they were basically an anti-immigrant party who worried that Australia was being "swamped by Asians". In the last decade they pivoted to anti-Islam for a bit, and then anti-wokeness, and are generally still flailing boobs. The larger issue remains - One Nation do well when there are issues that large segments of the electorate care about but which the major parties are not responsive to. One Nation are a symptom of political dysfunction. As with most far-right parties, then, it's foolish to try to attack them by attacking the party itself. You have to attack the underlying policy failures that give the party credibility. Once that's done the party's inherent weaknesses tend to come out.)

I've previously discussed why I'll be voting for Trump, but I want to put forward another reason that I don't believe has been sufficiently discussed here. It rather obviously extends from some rather tired discussion points, but bear with me I promise I'm going somewhere with it.

The Democrats are, in my view at least and without attempting to consensus build, the party of woke both in function and in form. Function is of course, obvious. Democrats are pro Diversity Equity and Inclusion, pro affirmative action, pro reparations, and are at the point where they're just straight up handing out racial spoils in the form of cold hard cash. It's not soft spoils anymore, wherein people are given a leg up at work, or an open door at an elite institution they otherwise may not have qualified for, but literal actual money. Form, equally obvious. Kamala Harris did not become Vice President because after a sober and serious discussion it was believed by the Biden campaign staff that she would be best suited to carry on his vision of the country should anything happen to him. She became Vice President because she's a woman of color to use the same terminology.

Trump is, for whatever reason, the avatar of anti-wokeness. He is where the anti-woke have dug their trenches, and fortified their positions. They are, for lack of a better option, my team. And yes, politics should not be a team based sport. It should be a contest between ideals and views for the future of our country that we want to share together. It should be disagreements about a bright future we both want, and just are uncertain how to achieve. It's not. Or maybe it is and the issue is that the Democrats view of a Bright Future is so radically different from my own that the two can no longer be reconciled. Further ink on this topic should be spilled by those who have the wit and intelligence to do so eloquently, as I unfortunately do not.

The only way, the only way to convince the Democrats that wokeness is Not Okay is to rub their noses in it like a dog. Smack them on the snout with a rolled up newspaper and proclaim "BAD!" in a thunderous shout. In a perfect world this would never have been required. In a better world they would have learned the lesson in 2016. We do not live in those worlds, we live in this one, and in this one they are still on the woke train. So I will vote for the man whose re-election constitutes the philosophical equivalent of smacking the Democratic Party on the nose with a rolled up newspaper before grinding it into the stain on the carpet. I have no other recourse left to me, or at least no other recourse I am willing to take. I do not hold the ear of any DNC staffer, I am not the son of a billionaire who could get a meeting with the President only by asking. I am Joe Schmoe the average voter, and my vote is the only weapon I can wield. So I am going to, or rather already did (thank you mail in ballots), vote for Trump, and I am going to pray that he wins because another four years of wokeness in the White House is only going to further destabilize this country.

If you're worried about wokeness, you should honestly be voting Democrat. When Trump was elected, the idea of wokeness was relatively new and was foreign to much of the Democratic party. By 2020 it had metastasized to become an overarching narrative, even as the party's nominee tried to distance himself from it. I remember on the old SSC board a number of people said they were voting for Trump in 2016 for similar reasons as you outline above, namely that a Trump victory would smack down this nascent wokism once and for all. Of course, it had quite the opposite effect; wokism was much more pervasive and much more mainstream at the end of Trump's term than it was at the beginning. Most of the perceived excesses of the movement, such that it existed, were more a direct reaction to Trump's election than to any overarching policy goals of the Democratic party.

Hillary Clinton wasn't woke in the slightest; anyone who could be remotely described as such was already in the tank for Sanders. Had Clinton won, it would have been a direct repudiation of the more radical elements of the party, and it would be at least 8 years before the wokes would get another crack at mainstream influence, if they still even existed. Trump's victory, however, allowed them to create a narrative that the party's loss was due to Clinton's intransigence when it came to social issues and more radical leftist policy. If Sanders had been the candidate, he would have trounced Trump and led America into a new era of prosperity. But the Democratic party insisted on running as a continuation of an Obama presidency that leftists had soured on and that conservatives had unfairly demonized. Add in the fact that no one really liked Hilary Clinton and Trump's victory seemed inevitable.

So now there is a large contingent of the left that is now stuck living with a Trump administration that, by the day, seems to be trying to outdo itself with how inept it can be, and with a president who is confirming all the suspicions they've had about the latent racism among a large part of the electorate. The presidency is a lost cause, but there are other routes. The Squad comes to power. The non-governmental institutions controlled by the left take a more active stance in promoting their ideology, or at least putting up guardrails against Trump's policies. By the time the absolute explosion in woke rhetoric happens in the summer of 2020 Trump has been in office for four years. His administration had an entire term to prevent what they saw on the horizon in 2016, and they failed absolutely miserably. The thing that irks me the most about right-wing complaints about wokism is that the most egregious examples of it — COVID policy, defund the police, riots, DEI — all happened under Trump's watch.

And then, as soon as Biden was elected, things started to cool down. Two members of The Squad were voted out of office this spring, and AOC has become a mainstream Pelosi acolyte. DEI people are being laid off. Robin D'Angelo is unemployed. Ibram X. Kendi hasn't published anything in years. Kamala Harris still has some vaguely woikish things in her arsenal, but she's backtracked on most of the woke positions she took in 2019. Republicans are criticizing her for this. Republican complaints about wokism seem anachronistic at this point; the only time most of these policies even come up is when Republican candidates mention them.

If Trump gets elected, what do you think is going to happen, that his opponents will just shut up? No, we're going to left-wing opposition to absolutely every one of his policy proposals, regardless of whether these proposals are actually right-wing or not. The entire Democratic apparatus will shift into a mode of limiting the damage as much as possible, and this will include protests, and resistance to policy changes and all the other bullshit that happened during the first Trump term. And Trump will be about as effective in stopping it as he was in his first term, unless he wants to turn the country into a full-on police state. I'm not saying you shouldn't vote what you feel, but if you seriously think that a Trump presidency will put an end to whatever woke bullshit you're concerned about, I have some swamp land in Jersey that's for sale.

  • -19

@Belisarius @jeroboam @Jiro @crushedoranges @FiveHourMarathon

I think the steelman of this argument (though a lot of steel's involved) looks something like this: select a Republican candidate who's not Donald Trump, because the backlash will be weaker and that has two major effects:

  1. you might actually get more done to roll back SJ because they're not sabotaging you quite as relentlessly (also because someone younger might be more switched-on)
  2. raising the CW's temperature is bad for America, because it raises the spectre of a fifth column if there's war.

This is an argument I actually accept and have made here before. It still has some decision-theory issues, and it's Machiavellian, but this is a place where I'd be willing to compromise on that.

Now, of course, this has long since been water under the bridge. Neither Trump nor Harris was a good candidate for CW-temperature purposes, and certainly Harris would not have served conservatives' cultural purposes. I still vaguely preferred her due to Trump's advanced age, but then again I don't have to live in the 'States. But I just felt I should point out that there was at one point a version of this argument that didn't totally suck.

It seems so far that the reaction to Trump has been muted which undermines this argument even more.

Of course Trump isn't great for rolling back the culture war excesses of the left because his administration shares plenty of ground with the deep state agenda. He might at best roll parts of it back.

There has been a right wing version of your arguement which is that right wingers would oppose it if Democrats do it but might support it if Trump does it. Which is about Trump's rhetoric for legal migration.

Neither Trump nor Harris was a good candidate for CW-temperature purposes

In my experience people who talk about CW temperature purposes are after retaining or expanding a cultural agenda that is too far to the left. If the other side to rolls over and accept this, it results in highest culture war temperature which isn't about conflict but also about enforcement of harmful agendas. Submission to that is worse than opposition.

Changing things from the far left excesses to a moral point and fixing things is how you reduce the culture war problems. I don't care about the problem of CW temperature if it means to retain or expand massive problems. Which would be the case with the Harris super woke agenda.

Trump's real problems is despite some rhetorical pandering he is still pretty quite aligned with neocons, we can see after his administration has been picked this is especially the case. There is also his rhetoric about mass legal migration where he actually didn't expand it in his first term but neither did he limit it, even as far as illegal immigration goes he wasn't that great even if a huge improvement over the Biden administration.

He even in his first term had an agenda for massive black targeted goverment spending with the platinum plan.

Another possible problem is perhaps too much corporatism and big pharma, weapon manufacturers collusion.

Or despite the rhetoric, deep state, secret services overreach continuing.

His problems are common problems with the republican party. We have seen constantly the right purge figures who aren't in fact too far right on the culture war, for being too far right on the culture war. The result has not been a reduction of culture war temperature. Even if someone promotes such counter intuitive strategies because they earnestly believe that they help things along, even if the strategies seem to be self defeating, then what they are proposing is something that we have repeatedly seen doesn't work.

I suspect most of our disagreement boils down to P(WWIII). I am assuming that in a large fraction of possible worlds, a nuclear exchange occurs and SJ dies in a fire due to disproportionate mortality + being blamed for weakening the West against external threats. This drastically alters the calculus.

Most of the rest, yes, probably boils down to different values.

Hillary Clinton wasn't woke in the slightest; anyone who could be remotely described as such was already in the tank for Sanders.

This is the opposite of my memory of 2016. Hillary was the candidate of Institutional Woke and Sanders was the last stand of the Old Left fighting to keep the focus on class issues instead of identity politics.

A key HRC quote that was credited with knocking Sanders out of her way

If we broke up the big banks tomorrow (parenthetical about how she would totally do that IF it were necessary), would that end racism? Would that end sexism?

That is my recollection as well. Bernie was essentially the last gasp of the labour-oriented non-idw left and now the Teamsters are voting Republican.

I suspect the Mistake Theorem for this is that wokism's flows and ebbs are on a time lag irrespective of who's President.

This is just the reversed version of arguing that we should vote for Trump because of the possibilty of another Jan 6th type event.

One can't be held hostage. Even if it's utilitarian true it has too much moral hazard.

Utilitarianism doesn't work when you're playing an intelligent opponent.

Utilitarianism doesn't work when you're playing an intelligent opponent.

The better formulation is "utilitarianism doesn't work if you're an idiot, because then you can't properly calculate utility". Second-order effects like this are supposed to be included in utilitarian calculations; the fact that a lot of people are too stupid to do this doesn't make the theory wrong, just a bad fit for them.

True - Utilitarianism doesn't work even in theory, because it instantly succumbs to combinatorial explosion once you have to account for multiple orders of consequence. The way utilitarians get around this in practice is adding greebles and epicycles until they're effectively back to deontology/virtue ethics/common sense with a quantitative flavour.

I was never much concerned with this kind of argument. Make a reasonable attempt to determine outcomes. That does not involve perfect knowledge or unbounded computational problems. Using a small bit of thought and your best understanding of the situation, you can make a reasonable approximation.

OK, but once you abandon the philosophical consistency of the system and the arguments that justify it, you're left with common sense with some inspiration from utilitarianism. Nothing wrong with that, it just means you're not really that much of a utilitarian (and has the amusing corollary that you'll become a better utilitarian by reading Aristotle than you will by reading Bentham). Of course, this is what the most intelligent utilitarian in history (Mill) did pretty much immediately on thinking seriously about the theory, it just took him a nervous breakdown to get there.

This sounds like 'if you kill your enemies, they win' but for politics.

If you're worried about wokeness, you should honestly be voting Democrat.

If something straightforwardly helps your opponent and harms you, any claims from him about the opposite are concern trolling or motivated reasoning. The straightforward effect of supporting a side that is more woke is to increase wokeness.

This isn't a real argument at all. It's a sop to blue tribe "rationalists" (and others of similar beliefs) who can see all the problems with their preferred team, but cannot bring themself to consider voting for the other team. This kind of argument gives them a "rational" reason to keep voting Democratic. They fall for it every time, because they want to believe it. We saw it pushed for Biden too, where it had a somewhat better fig leaf. It turned out not to be true (right Admiral Levine?), but that doesn't matter; whatever gives permission to keep voting for Democrats is fine.

Ah, the old "don't try to win because if you win the backlash will be worse" strategy.

By the same token, if you want open borders you should probably vote Republican right? Or does it only work one way?

This line if reasoning about backlash drives me crazy, depending on the speaker it’s inevitably either dishonest or hopelessly misguided.

I voted against Trump in 2016 for reasons they turned out to be false, and for him in 2020 specifically because of the high probability of a horrendous backlash.

I saw his enemies slip the mask after 2016, I wanted much much more of that. I wanted his enemies to reveal how psychotic and narcissistically hateful that I knew they were, for everyone to see. That way when they popped their heads up to scream ghoulishly for blood, the body politic could (rhetorically) bash their fucking skulls in with whatever was handy (in Minecraft).

Sometimes you have to induce a fever to kill a disease.

Wokeness was on the upswing in Obama’s 2nd term.

If you're worried about wokeness, you should honestly be voting Democrat.

If Trump gets elected, what do you think is going to happen, that his opponents will just shut up? No, we're going to left-wing opposition to absolutely every one of his policy proposals, regardless of whether these proposals are actually right-wing or not. The entire Democratic apparatus will shift into a mode of limiting the damage as much as possible, and this will include protests, and resistance to policy changes and all the other bullshit that happened during the first Trump term. And Trump will be about as effective in stopping it as he was in his first term, unless he wants to turn the country into a full-on police state. I'm not saying you shouldn't vote what you feel, but if you seriously think that a Trump presidency will put an end to whatever woke bullshit you're concerned about, I have some swamp land in Jersey that's for sale.

You are looking for a schmuck to play heads I win, tails you lose here.

There really isn't a point with giving in to people who act like this. The correct treatment to people who make such demands is to understand their open hostility and treat people who are hostile to your agenda and try to manipulate you into losing, as people who are in fact hostile to your agenda, and are just using arguments as soldiers and willing to play dirty. The later is important information that justifies a stronger and more decisive reaction.

It is of course insulting. By offering this blatantly bad self destructive advice you are telling the right and the people you are discussing with, not without any reason since this arrogance has been cultivated by much of the political space uselessness and spinelessness against the left, that you think they are enormously gullible.

This escalation is helpful since it helps clarifies even more so the uselessness of appeasement. This tactic of lose, or we will massively overreact and you have to give in, or we will make things far worse, does not work on people who have a modicum of intellectual courage, aren't highly gullible, and so I think you chose a poor strategy. In addition to it being a disreputable tactic. It actually is going to piss off your targets that you think so low of them, that you can manipulate them in this manner.

Yeah, the world doesn't work the way that this poster imagines.

In game theory, if you hurt someone and they continue to support you, then the obvious thing to do is to hurt them even more.

There's even a word that starts with C for people who ingratiate themselves to those who harm them.

I don't know what it is, but this attitude fills me with more contempt than actual woke people. Woke people are pretty upfront about what they want: an explicit hierarchy with white men at the bottom. It's evil, but at least its an ethos.

But white men who support this agenda disgust me. The most contemptible thing a person can do is not defend their own rights. Who would ever want to be brothers or friends with a person who hates themselves? Who would want someone in their tribe who would cry tears for strangers but not for their own family?

The only way, the only way to convince the Democrats that wokeness is Not Okay is to rub their noses in it like a dog. Smack them on the snout with a rolled up newspaper and proclaim "BAD!" in a thunderous shout.

Repetition and italics are no substitute for an argument for a claim as strong as the one you are making here. Not only can't you think of any other way, but you are also convinced that the rolled up newspaper would work? On what basis?

Do you think that with the tables turned, it works on you? Does the cultural strategy run by progressives for the past n years, with your candidates dragged through courts and media, your adherents marginalised from work and education, and your cultural artifacts vandalised, not amount to repeated blows with a rolled-up newspaper to the nose of anti-wokes? I assume that their doing of this is based on a very similar sentiment as yours, so why is it not working for them? Why are you not convinced yet that anti-wokeness is Not Okay?

It has largely worked for the woke. A large portion of the population has gone from fervently supporting color blindness to fervently supporting affirmative action, and so on for every other social issue. It doesn’t convert everyone. It doesn’t have to.

This seems to be saying that beating anti-wokes with a newspaper convinced those who were already members of the progressive coalition to get with the program and update to a different sub-ideology in their camp, not that it had any effect to dissuade those who were targeted by it. You could argue that there was a similar pool of proto-allies that merely needed to be scared into backing a promising new strategy when Trumpism first came around and had to fight against older schools of conservatism in the Republican coalition, but by now that pool seems to have been largely exhausted.

The only way, the only way to convince the Democrats that wokeness is Not Okay is to rub their noses in it like a dog. Smack them on the snout with a rolled up newspaper and proclaim "BAD!" in a thunderous shout. In a perfect world this would never have been required. In a better world they would have learned the lesson in 2016. We do not live in those worlds, we live in this one, and in this one they are still on the woke train. So I will vote for the man whose re-election constitutes the philosophical equivalent of smacking the Democratic Party on the nose with a rolled up newspaper before grinding it into the stain on the carpet.

They did learn a lesson from 2016; Biden the 2020 candidate was considerably more moderate. The problem is that Biden the 2021-2024 President, or rather his administration, wasn't moderate at all, because apparently the lesson they learned was "fake being moderate on the campaign trail and then exploit it once in power".

I think your only hope on this path is that the Democratic machine politicians are pragmatic enough to be willing to appeal to the centre and far-sighted enough to realise that tricking them is not a long-term solution and powerful enough to force the SJer groundswell into line; I'm not rating that very highly.

I think the ultimate way to deal with this has to include shattering all of SJ's walled gardens, so that they get to start seeing rightists first-hand as people, and so that their Authority foundation stops locking onto HR ladies and similar types. This, admittedly, does require power, and lots of it.

because apparently the lesson they learned was "fake being moderate on the campaign trail and then exploit it once in power".

It's worth calling out that this was the lesson they learned from Obama. Obama campaigned as a moderate then, twice, betrayed the expectations of people who wanted a moderate. He was expected to do things like help heal racial divisions, not just by being a black man in power, but by actively holding the door open to black Americans to enter the political mainstream. Instead he said Trayvon Martin looked like he could be his son. He was expected to reform American healthcare (a very key issue at the time, when lots of people were losing access to employer provided health insurance during the Great Recession) but ended up creating (what was perceived as) a complex and expensive left wing boondoggle.

This pissed a lot of people off, but only people who were paying close attention. Republicans cleaned up in the House in 2010 and in the Senate in 2014 because only the people who care about politics enough to pay attention voted in mid-terms. Democratic strategists noticed and they started to reconsider the Clinton strategy of actually being a moderate and thought about, instead, just looking like a moderate in election season. They felt like the learned the wrong lesson from 1996, where Bill's hard turn right had led to him recovering his popularity and resoundingly beating expectations after becoming the first Democratic President to lose Congress in half a century. Gore, despite his obsession with global warming, was nevertheless one step above a Blue Dog in a lot of ways and Kerry was considering an acceptably moderate alternative to John Edwards. It was only when Obama swept in 2008 and then still won re-election 2012 that it was decided that actually being moderate wasn't what mattered.

I think your only hope on this path is that the Democratic machine politicians are pragmatic enough to be willing to appeal to the centre and far-sighted enough to realise that tricking them is not a long-term solution and powerful enough to force the SJer groundswell into line; I'm not rating that very highly.

Right, wokeness took the class of credentialed expert Democrats consider suitable for appointment to government positions by storm. Democratic appointees will be woke by default. Having a moderate at the top of the ticket isn't enough to produce a non-woke Democratic administration. You'd need someone at the top of the ticket who understood wokeness and was actively against it.

Even then, against the present backdrop of elite ideological opinion they'd have a very hard time sourcing non-woke appointees and staffers; they'd constantly be fighting woke flareups in their own administration, and the woke are masterful at causing PR nightmares or internal organizational strife when they don't get their way.

The problem is that Biden the 2021-2024 President, or rather his administration, wasn't moderate at all, because apparently the lesson they learned was "fake being moderate on the campaign trail and then exploit it once in power".

Well, more specifically, Biden couldn’t be moderate because the available people to staff his admin aren’t. For similar reasons republican admins have to be pro-life.

Hard agree. Everytime my liberal friends get annoyed at me for being less anti-Trump than they are I remind them that as a Republican I have votes against him more than they have. I voted third party in 2016 and held my nose and votes for Biden in 2020. But this time I might vote Trump, mostly because I actually kinda like JD Vance and I think Trump is sufficiently uninterested in actually governing that Vance will get to drive a lot of the actual agenda, and I think there is about a 50/50 chance that Trump drops dead in office and Vance becomes President anyway. If I could vote for any of the four of Trump, Vance, Harris, or Walz it would be Vance by far so that factor might decide the "who is less shitty" contest for me. But how sad is that....

Part of the issue I have with Trump is that if he goes senile or has a stroke, but does not clinically die, he's unlikely to 25A himself and it's not immediately obvious that Vance and his cabinet would dare to invoke 25A section 4 given their voter base's immense personal loyalty to Trump (cf. "Hang Mike Pence").

Of course, this mostly matters to me because my P(WWIII) is high; outside of that scenario, it's not as big a deal.

On the other hand, trump seems uniquely likely to let Vance run everything while only being in charge on paper.

I felt this way in 2016 and 2020.

I'm libertarian and have never really liked the main two parties.

Trump has oddly grown on me. It might just be my serial contrariasm. The constant hate thrown his way has made me more skeptical of all criticism about him. If they were willing to lie about him being a Russian spy than what else are they saying that is a lie?

His actual governing record was not bad from my perspective. No new wars, a slate of justices that flipped the court, and a government that was mostly focused on fights I didn't care about.

He got rid of the patriot act and seems to have done an OK job getting Europe to help pay for NATO.

It seems that Russia invading Ukraine got Europe to pay for NATO. The Patriot Act is gone, but does anyone think the NSA has curtailed its surveillance since it expired?

Russia invading Ukraine is post Trump and also post the initial increased funding pledges.

Russia invaded, almost certainly, because Biden was perceived as weak.

And were the Russians right?

Yes.

It's a piece of the puzzle. We've seen courts be more willing to stand up to government agencies lately, so I think the Patriot Act falling at least makes NSA surveillance less legal.

Stranger still Trump mean tweeted the Patriot Act away. He tweeted that he wouldn't sign an extension. Congressional leaders tweeted back that they would fix it so he could sign it. Then they never followed through and it expired.

He also mean tweeted immigration down.

Truly modern politics.

If it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid.

I do not have TDS, I do not think he is Literally Hitler, but I do think he's a con, a huckster, an embarrassing buffoon who I believe actually loves America as much as I believe he goes to church on Sunday and has ever read the Bible in his life. I think he totally would become an absolute dictator if he could manage it, but it would require too much effort and political acumen and cunning, which he does not have.

That's just TDS with extra steps. You think Donald Trump doesn't love America? You think he wants to become a dictator? The man is pretty open and forthcoming in recent podcasts and interviews, he talks about not wanting to charge Hillary for precedent it would set, not wanting to replace the Secret Service with his own bodyguard, how the assassination attempt has made him reconsider his relationship to God, etc.

He has a huge personality and charisma, and some people think that translates into him being a skilled politician. He's not. He's got performer's instincts and a gift for graft.

I cannot possibly imagine what your definition of "skilled politician" would be that completely excludes Donald Trump. Ten years ago the man was a political laughingstock and he now leads one of the most significant political movements in American history.

This doesn't really make him unique among American presidents, but it makes him uniquely bad in this time and place.

Before Trump, we were wailing about wokes and the death of civilization and riding the decline. Now a significant part of the country not only believes in Making America Great Again, but Greater Than Ever Before. Trump managed to add to this coalition a literal Kennedy, working class blue collar union workers, tech CEOs, evangelicals, and the long-forgotten spirit of American endeavors.

I can't convince you to believe the things I believe, I guess, but I think it's your attitude that's wrong with America today, not Trump's. Win or lose Trump is doing glorious things and awakening a spirit that wants to build America and make it great again. You will never do anything glorious.

That's just TDS with extra steps. You think Donald Trump doesn't love America? You think he wants to become a dictator?

As a place where you can get rich? Sure. But he also seems to sneer at military service. Remember his attacks on McCain? As for being a dictator, depends on your definition of dictator. I think he's used to getting his way, though his wants tend to be more impulsive and pettier than most dictators.

he talks about not wanting to charge Hillary for precedent it would set, not wanting to replace the Secret Service with his own bodyguard, how the assassination attempt has made him reconsider his relationship to God, etc.

He spent a significant amount of time where he did in fact want to go after Hillary. According to the Mueller report he tried to get Sessions to go after Clinton but Sessions refused (pdf page 319). It would easily fit that he wasn't actually able to go after Hillary and is under investigation himself, so of course now he's going to say investigating former presidents is bad. Similarly he's running as a Republican, so mentioning the assassination and using it to talk about religion is pretty much what I'd expect any politician to do.

I cannot possibly imagine what your definition of "skilled politician" would be that completely excludes Donald Trump.

Credit where credit is due, few manage to be President. Obama was a politician with barely any record but knew how to give a speech. Trump knew how to channel the sorry state of the Republican field and frame himself as an outsider. Once in office, I think those same Republicans in Congress called the shots and he signed his name on things. Most of the things he tried on his own initiative didn't seem to go anywhere.

Before Trump, we were wailing about wokes and the death of civilization and riding the decline. Now a significant part of the country not only believes in Making America Great Again, but Greater Than Ever Before.

Wokeness arguably accelerated in response to Trump. I'm not sure how much of its decline is due to Trump as opposed to the left themselves. And both candidates are arguably among the most disliked in history

Wokeness accelerated before Trump and under actual policies followed by Biden, Harris and the kind of people they promoted and excluded. Trump actually tried to ban DEI ideology in his goverment. Even in terms of the supreme court, the appointments of Trump hasn't been that greatly conservative while Biden's appointments and Harris future appointments would destroy freedom of speech and the first amendment.

There has also been the supreme court decicion against Affirmative Action. Which wouldn't have happened if the supreme court was staffed by the kind of people that are selected by Clinton, Biden and would be selected by Harris.

We have also seen the rise of right wing opposition to wokeness. To be frank some of the people opposing it also agree with elements of it.

Without Trump as a unifying force on the right if instead of him we had someone who compromised (much more) with such policies, the reaction would have been even weaker. An appeasing right would be itself woke. Elon Musk capture of twitter is also an obvious factor in the decline of elements of wokeness although there are elements of cultural far leftism such as mass migration that Elon himself doesn't oppose, although the change in ownership has lead to more speech in that direction too which is a good thing. And Musk does not appease Kamala in the way you suggest he ought to.

And there might also be left wing fatigue.

This idea that people who do X should be appeased while people who sort of oppose X but not sufficiently should be opposed because they are to blame to X has always failed when it comes to the cultural left losing influence and it is is a manipulative argument.

Somehow this bad advice that liberals offer is not given to the left. The self destructive course that you win by losing is freely given to the right.

The answer can be nothing but a No. But also in itself there is something "bellow the belt" in trying to manipulate people to vote against their interests by presenting what is blatantly self destructive course as helping them win on the issue.

The right should oppose more strongly wokeness and keep the politicians they elect more in check because they actually have been appeasing cultural/identity far left, too much and sharing too much of its perspective. No, this doesn't mean they should elect leftists who would be far worse on these issues.

For example, Trump on wokeness is better than Harris, Biden and Clinton would have been, but he is still the guy who promoted the platinum plan which gave specific 500 billion investment to blacks. Like the Biden administration gave disproportionate funds targeting even in general economic help bills, its progressive stack demographics.

And if one examines Bush, Reagan, Nixon, they would find worse examples of this than Trump's platinum plan. So, in addition to this bad advice that is one sidedly given, the part of the problem of rising of wokeness is that the left is in fact extremely biased in favor of its favorite groups and against its hated groups. The right which does sort of oppose this and isn't as bad, often both appeases them and doesn't do enough to oppose them and does some similiar things. And there are also elements within right wing movements who are much more false opposition and on team liberal and are four step back for any limited hangout pretension of opposition. And others who are one step forward, one step back, or two steps forward, one step back.

So, if you got to elect someone else than Trump to oppose wokeness more effectively, it ought to be someone who is more antiwoke than Trump is, not Harris who is far, far more woke. And while electing leftists is a worse option, it is good to criticise those who claim to oppose wokeness but either do not, or are two steps forward, one step back types. That is they compromise too much in certain areas which probably applies to Trump, who is still much better on wokeness than Harris would be, based on what we have seen from their rule.

Maybe if the people who demoralize right wingers put effort at demoralizing liberals, cultural leftists, woke types, and joined the rising movement against the cultural and identity left, things would be worse for woke types and we would see stronger decline on policy by organizations and the goverment.

The much advertised decline of wokeness can't be just sentiment change that we ought to be satisfied with but sentiment must be used to change policies.

For one example, to effectively oppose wokeness, if Trump is elected, the Trump administration must use the department of justice to go after companies violating the civil rights of their employees by choosing to discriminate against hiring white employees over blacks and other by default "diverse" demographics, following BLM's direction. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/

Another facet of this can be Soros prosecutors who not only promoted but still promote decriminalization policies.

Exercising power to restrict it rather than electing its supporters who use their power to support it, is the only way for the "woke" agenda to genuinely lose. And since this is a big deal that includes significant violations of the most basic civic rights, especially of nation forming people in their own homeland, and there is also an issue of the criminality involved and further escalation in abuse of rights as those who have been getting away with this get more arrogant, it really is an issue that must be seen from the perspective of criminal and civic rights violations that is a priority to stop people from doing, and to punish.

Same with the moral obligation of prosecutors to prosecute crime. The state and media, corporations can not be run by any sort of ideologue, who does as they please to screw over non progressive favored groups but there are both laws, precedent, the constitution, and certain virtues, moral obligations and even professional traits that must be part of the system. In practice there has been an usurpation of such system by the new left shadow constitution, of which wokeness is a continuation and expansion of, and which has a continuing trajectory towards more South Africa type of polices and governance. Whether we are talking about bureaucrats, journalists, CEO's. These people have a duty not to follow the progressive stack ideology, and it is possible to even interpret laws against the shadow constitution already in the books to go after them. But not reason not to institute new laws and revoke bad past ones where necessary.

The supreme court interpreting disparate impact as unconstitutional which there is no chance happening by Harris appointments can be one way things can move closer to the direction of limiting wokeness. But like the AA decision, which by it self was helpful but not sufficient to stop it, there must be follow through both by the goverment and the development further of real journalists exposing such violations, and a lobby, including law proffessionals willing to sue and go after them. The kind of movement that even wants to do anything like this is is not going to comprise of liberal nevertrumpers.

For context for the low, I consider myself center-left and anti-woke.

I think wokeness is both cultural and political. My starting point I would say is this survey, which I think puts a major shift at around 2014. I do wish there was a more up-to-date chart, but I can't find one. Anyway, I don't think it means that wokeness is defeated if we get a Republican President for 4 years, then a Democrat brings it back. I think it has to be defeated culturally.

I was disappointed in Biden in that he was probably the most centrist of the 2020 candidates, and, well, we see the results. As far as Trump goes, there's a concept called reciprocal radicalization. That is, something that drives recruitment for X also drives recruitment for opposition to X. Trump was also a uniting force on the left. Even as a Dem I'm not excited for a potential Harris win, I simply find Trump's behavior completely disqualifying.

As far as the Supreme Court goes, Barrett has actually been pretty good. As has Jackson overall, even I oppose the reason she was picked. I do support their affirmative action ruling, though that has been overshadowed by my strong dislike of their presidential immunity ruling.

The problem with having the DoJ go after anti-racist companies is the same as the difficulty going after racist companies - dog whistles. They can always just say that promoting diversity is innocuous free speech and that it just happened to work out that the best candidates aligned with their diversity goals. You have to prove something like them saying they're not hiring you because you're white, and no intelligent person would do that.

The polls have noted a dramatic rightward shift for young men. My hope is that Dems will learn from that.

The problem with having the DoJ go after anti-racist companies is the same as the difficulty going after racist companies - dog whistles. They can always just say that promoting diversity is innocuous free speech and that it just happened to work out that the best candidates aligned with their diversity goals. You have to prove something like them saying they're not hiring you because you're white, and no intelligent person would do that.

No, this isn't that big of a problem, because they openly say it. Because it was allowed without sufficient backlash, plenty of not very intelligent and intelligent people in journalism, media, politicians, presidents, CEOs, NGO leaders and even people who run corporations and other institutions that are able to bully and nudge people around like Blackrock, openly supported, and continue to support racist discrimination against whites, men, etc. There have also been plenty of intelligent people who haven't been organized and didn't openly oppose it, but will more strongly oppose it with a political environment that is more hostile to this. You could even have some who in the madness of group thing might have went along with it in 2020s and BLM was more active, but now would be enthusiastic in working together with those who wish to crush this. Or do so, because of wanting to raise through the ranks.

Making DIE policies taboo and to be (accurately) treated as racist while making opposing it the non taboo position can be done.

Some have started hiding their power level though after the affirmative action ruling.

There has been no problem in the political establishment to openly condemn pro white discrimination and even exaggerating and making shit up. There is a lot of opportunity to crash those who obviously do antiwhite racism, which is not anti-racism, which requires to just not be guilible.

Forcing companies to fire pro diversity ideologues and to enforce controls to make sure these kind of people don't decide, is something that can be done.

You could even reward whistelblowers and make it open season for people alleging to have been discriminated to sue them. This is already happening with the disparate impact, except people who haven't been discriminated are getting massive payments over nothing. It is feasible to even take into consideration studies evaluating performance, IQ differences, and the specifics in each case, and i am not suggesting we enforce a system that is guilible in any accusation, but one that stops the blatant antiwhtie discrimination happening today.

Much of modern politics is based on the demand for the right and associated ethnic groups to be guilible pushovers in a self destructive manner. When you don't behave in a gullible manner, the possibilities of what can be done open up. They can't get away with it just by pretending they aren't doing so, if there is sufficient effort to keep them accountable.

Why not force companies suspected in engaging in discriminatory practices, such as companies that have engaged with ESG, Woke, policies, or followed AA policies, to demonstrate they have change course. To actually hire people who openly condemn such policies past and present a demosntratable record of taking measures within company to ensure that such practices are condemend and people who support following them and are to violate the law (what will be bolstered with additional legislation too). Suing companies will also helps things. The idea that the company's duty is to its shareholders.

These things can be polled. A field that is very lopsided to the left is going to engage in these because this the ideology of the left today.

I would also add that the agenda that favors massive waves of mass migration that would demographically change the country that makes whites a minority and claims that is a good thing to demographically change the country is another woke policy. One that Biden bragged about before becoming president and executed when he was president. Again, Trump's numbers on mass migration aren't good but Biden's were at least twice as bad, while in terms of rhetoric the first was wishy washy on mass migration and openly opposed illegal migration while the Democrats effectively are for open borders and illegal migration. Trump might also have reduced illegal immigration more if other politicians, judges, etc were more willing to share his vision.

And of course, the policies of the goverment in regards to these issues are enormously influential. It does matter if an administration promotes DEI policies and ideologues as Biden's did and Harris will do. Or if it passes executive orders against it.

It's like dealing with someone who might not be sufficiently effective in fixing a problem but at least tries to fix facets of it, vs those who strongly support making it worse and doubling down on it.

The polls have noted a dramatic rightward shift for young men. My hope is that Dems will learn from that.

There is no reason to have hope in the Dems changing from their trajectory. The ideologues are running the show and Kamala Harris who is especially woke even for Democrats woke standards is part of that. If someone hopes that Dems learn from that and change and have demonstrated their change in ideology and deserve support, only after they have changed a case can be made.

Since it is their ideology and also they expect to benefit electorally by mass migration and pandering to their progressive identity coalition, they are unlikely to change.

Voting for someone who is super woke today under the hope that they will change is not a wise course to follow.

As far as the Supreme Court goes, Barrett has actually been pretty good. As has Jackson overall, even I oppose the reason she was picked. I do support their affirmative action ruling, though that has been overshadowed by my strong dislike of their presidential immunity ruling.

Jackson has ruled a dissenting opinion in favor of retaining affirmative action. So there would have been a different rulling if the Democrats picked supreme corut justices.

She also responded to the case of the Biden administration pressuring Twitter to censor speech with supporting it and claiming:

“So, my biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods,” Jackson

snip

“So, I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” Jackson said. “I’m really worried about that because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying that the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/19/note-ketanji-brown-jackson-first-amendment-should-hamstring-government-thats-entire-point/amp/

The Democrats want to put supreme court justices that would bring hate speech laws. Kamala and her running mate has been pretty outspoken about their view on freedom of speech and misinformation and hate speech. The Democrats flipping the courts will escalate things in a worse direction on such issues.

The evidence is pretty overwhelming that Democrats are far worse on wokeness/intersectional progressive ideology, than Trump. Which is why we observe the very strong trend of supporters of wokeness who care enough about the issue support the Democrats because they see them as woke and opponents of it, who also care about the issue, oppose them. I guess someone could argue that some of supporters of aspects of the general woke ideology tree who genuinely oppose other aspects of wokeness might oppose Democrats, while supporting Trump. But these people, still oppose the Democrats because they are too woke.

For context for the low, I consider myself center-left and anti-woke.

Being anti-woke is not consistent with supporting the Democrats on the issue of wokeness over Trump. This inconsistency is there, however someone wishes to identify as.

To be about X you need to have standards about X and follow them through when evaluating when someone passes or doesn't pass standards.

Rather than trying to square a circle, teaching the Democrats a lesson and holding them accountable for being so woke should be the path for the anti-woke to do.

It seems that that among some people here there is some emotional attachment to belonging in the team, and party that isn't associated with being right wing. For people who have voted for them, expecting to be something better, or voted them in the past before they moved as far to the left as they did now, it doesn't mean you need to have as a permanent part of own identity to be a Democrat. Since you consider yourself anti-woke, and they fail the test, you don't need to defend them on this issue. They aren't entitled to your support.

No, this isn't that big of a problem

Anti-discrimination laws already forbid basing hiring decisions on race or gender (with exceptions for specific jobs). White is a race and male is a gender. But to have standing you have to have a person who didn't get a job, and you have to prove that person specifically would have been hired if not for DEI.

Forcing companies to fire pro diversity ideologues and to enforce controls to make sure these kind of people don't decide, is something that can be done.

Why not force companies suspected in engaging in discriminatory practices, such as companies that have engaged with ESG, Woke, policies, or followed AA policies, to demonstrate they have change course.

This can be done culturally, but to attempt legally would be likely illegal (with maybe some exception for state-run universities) and I would never support it. Sorry I'm not up for "government should not exceed its authority, except when I really feel like it." Not having a totalitarian government is more important to me than beating annoying people.

I would also add that the agenda that favors massive waves of mass migration that would demographically change the country that makes whites a minority and claims that is a good thing to demographically change the country is another woke policy.

I think you need to get off the internet a bit. Progressives want to help poor people, to the extent that they're willing to let a bunch of people in from other countries, legally or otherwise. You want to think this a bad idea? Absolutely fine. But it is not "We are doing this to ethnically cleanse white people." I oppose illegal immigration (but don't hold it against the kids brought along by their parents) and want people to culturally assimilate, but I'm going to blunt that I don't give a flying fuck what the racial makeup of America is, now or in the future. I want everyone to stop making a big deal over what race someone is.

Jackson has ruled a dissenting opinion in favor of retaining affirmative action. So there would have been a different rulling if the Democrats picked supreme corut justices.

Fair. I was mostly thinking in overall terms. Jackson has a bent against prosecutor and administration overreach, to the point of ruling in favor of some of the J6 people because the government was taking creative liberties on what to charge them with. I wasn't remembering some of her specific actions.

Being anti-woke is not consistent with supporting the Democrats on the issue of wokeness over Trump. This inconsistency is there, however someone wishes to identify as.

There is no reason to have hope in the Dems changing from their trajectory. The ideologues are running the show and Kamala Harris who is especially woke even for Democrats woke standards is part of that. If someone hopes that Dems learn from that and change and have demonstrated their change in ideology and deserve support, only after they have changed a case can be made.

Welcome to the two party system. I am not a single issue voter and quite frankly, believe Trump should be in jail for election fraud and to a much lesser extent obstructing the return of classified documents. Any chance of me flipping parties was toast the moment he was nominated again. There is no path for me to "follow through" on opposing wokeness without also sabotaging other principles and beliefs I hold more important.

Dems are no more a monolith than Reps. There are plenty of Republicans even here in this thread that despise Trump but are voting for him anyway because to them the alternative is worse. That's me with Kamala. I don't care to dig it up, but I remember an old survey that claimed that progressives were only like 8% of the population. That's a minority even among the Dems, but just big enough that if they don't vote then you end up with a Republican in that seat. And Dems are currently in an awkward position where usually the party supports a first-term President for the renomination. Biden should have dropped out, and had to be forced out too late that the Vice President was the only real pivot they had. And said pivot was a pointless diversity pick because Vice Presidents don't really do anything.

As a place where you can get rich? Sure. But he also seems to sneer at military service.

The guy has done dozens if not hundreds of events with vets and their families, he loves them, they love him, what are you talking about? He got attacked for going to Arlington and all of the vets there defended him. The Atlantic ran that story about Trump refusing to pay for a Mexican soldier's burial and the sister of the guy called it insulting and said that Trump was deeply moved. There are stories like these happening all the time, but these are two from just the last week.

Remember his attacks on McCain?

McCain was a horrible person!

I think he's used to getting his way,

The guy has been in business for sixty years, that involves doing a lot of business, a lot of deals. Supposing that Trump is just this manchild-lik baby who is "used to getting his way" is TDS.

According to the Mueller report he tried to get Sessions to go after Clinton but Sessions refused (pdf page 319). It would easily fit that he wasn't actually able to go after Hillary and is under investigation himself, so of course now he's going to say investigating former presidents is bad.

Obviously Trump is a political actor so we can't take his word at any sort of face value, but Robert Mueller, the esteemed Robert Mueller, not at all a political actor, his report says that Trump is bad! And we have to believe that.

According to the Mueller report he tried to get Sessions to go after Clinton but Sessions refused (pdf page 319). It would easily fit that he wasn't actually able to go after Hillary and is under investigation himself, so of course now he's going to say investigating former presidents is bad.

You sound like someone who hasn't actually watched Trump speak. Go watch any of his recent podcasts or interviews. He talks about it. He feels genuinely saved by God. He talks about religion in terms he didn't talk about before. It's not that cynical.

Most of the things he tried on his own initiative didn't seem to go anywhere.

North Korea, ISIS, border wall, tax cuts, border security, tariffs, NAFTA renegotiations, deregulation. The political class in DC spent years fighting this guy, he got a lot done, and now everything that the politicians spent years kicking and screaming trying to fight gets counted as a flaw of Trump's because we can't admit that Trump was actually competent. You just linked me a document written by Robert Mueller as part of a 3-year hoax meant to completely undermine Trump's presidency, and then rhetorically throw up your hands, gee, boy, Trump couldn't get a lot done, must because he's not a get-a-lot-done kind of guy.

The guy has done dozens if not hundreds of events with vets and their families, he loves them, they love him, what are you talking about? He got attacked for going to Arlington and all of the vets there defended him.

He got attacked for using cemeteries for photo-ops, which is the opposite of respecting the military.

McCain was a horrible person!

I'm not referring to your or Trump's general impression of McCain as a person. I'm referring to Trump's comments on McCain's military service. Coming from a guy who couldn't serve due to "heel spurs."

The guy has been in business for sixty years, that involves doing a lot of business, a lot of deals. Supposing that Trump is just this manchild-lik baby who is "used to getting his way" is TDS.

I'm not referring to his business deals, I'm referring to the way he treats his staff. Trump is unusually unable to retain staff. And they have a lot to say about him in return. Could they be lying? Sure, but so could Trump. And to me the accusations they are making seem consistent to me with observed behaviors about Trump that I would at least consider them circumstantial evidence.

Obviously Trump is a political actor so we can't take his word at any sort of face value, but Robert Mueller, the esteemed Robert Mueller, not at all a political actor, his report says that Trump is bad! And we have to believe that.

It sounded to me like you were in fact taking his word at face value. Mueller is a political actor, sure. But this also wasn't something like Mueller giving his opinion. This was Mueller conducting a government investigation and publishing his finding in a report. That comes with penalties for lying. We know that Trump campaigned on "locking up" Hillary. Then after being in office he stopped. We're not in dispute about that, are we? Trump claimed he didn't want to hurt the Clintons, which makes no sense. Was he previously confused about what "locking her up" implied?

Mueller reports allegations that Trump on multiple occasions attempted to persuade Sessions to go after Hillary, and that Trump made several public comments on Twitter and to the New York Times that would align with said attempts. For instance:

On June 5, 2018, for example, the President tweeted, “The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself. . . . I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined . . . and Sessions knew better than most that there was No Collusion!” On August 1, 2018, the President tweeted that “Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now.” On August 23, 2018, the President publicly criticized Sessions in a press interview and suggested that prosecutions at the Department of Justice were politically motivated because Paul Manafort had been prosecuted but Democrats had not. The President said, “I put in an Attorney General that never took control of the Justice Department, Jeff Sessions.” That day, Sessions issued a press statement that said, “I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in . . . . While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.” The next day, the President tweeted a response: “‘Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.’ Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the ‘other side’ including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump campaign, Russian collusion by Dems – and so much more. Open up the papers & documents without redaction? Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!”

breaking up subjects

You sound like someone who hasn't actually watched Trump speak. Go watch any of his recent podcasts or interviews. He talks about it. He feels genuinely saved by God. He talks about religion in terms he didn't talk about before. It's not that cynical.

Trump is good at lying and has speechwriters to help. Religious belief is unfalsifiable and something many politicians who cheat on their wives (including Trump himself) claim.

North Korea, ISIS, border wall, tax cuts, border security, tariffs, NAFTA renegotiations, deregulation. The political class in DC spent years fighting this guy, he got a lot done, and now everything that the politicians spent years kicking and screaming trying to fight gets counted as a flaw of Trump's because we can't admit that Trump was actually competent. You just linked me a document written by Robert Mueller as part of a 3-year hoax meant to completely undermine Trump's presidency, and then rhetorically throw up your hands, gee, boy, Trump couldn't get a lot done, must because he's not a get-a-lot-done kind of guy.

North Korea I don't think he got anything done. ISIS I don't recall anything but a continuation of government policy and Obama era drone strikes. Border wall I guess some sections were added though if I recall he wanted across the entire 2,000 mile border (which is a stupid idea because that would cost an insane amount of money and getting past a fence with delusions of grandeur is easy). I suppose I'll grant you tax cuts, border bills, tariffs, and USMCA, though I would argue that a lot of that was more due to Republicans in Congress (a.k.a. the elites) than Trump.

You accuse me of TDS and then turn around and definitively state the Mueller report is a hoax. If I have TDS then you have the opposite.

He got attacked for using cemeteries for photo-ops, which is the opposite of respecting the military.

Guy goes to a funeral for families of veterans killed during the current administration. You have to dismiss this as a "photo op" because it's very good evidence that Trump has respect for the military. Oh no, he didn't follow some stupid rules about the correct official procedure for comforting grieving families, he just went to the funeral and spent time with the families, it's just a photo-op.

I'm not referring to your or Trump's general impression of McCain as a person. I'm referring to Trump's comments on McCain's military service. Coming from a guy who couldn't serve due to "heel spurs."

McCain was a horrible person who used his military service as a rhetorical shield to make war anywhere the MIC could make money. Trump rightly points out that McCain's service wasn't even all that honorable, he was a rat. Insulting McCain as a scumbag is no more disrespecting the military than mocking Rosie O'Donnell is hatred of women.

I'm not referring to his business deals, I'm referring to the way he treats his staff. Trump is unusually unable to retain staff.

Name a person you think would not have been fired except for Trump being a manchild. The reason Trump got rid of so many people is that so many of them were horrible. The reason so many of them were horrible is that DC is full of them.

This was Mueller conducting a government investigation and publishing his finding in a report. That comes with penalties for lying.

You are naive.

Guy goes to a funeral for families of veterans killed during the current administration. You have to dismiss this as a "photo op" because it's very good evidence that Trump has respect for the military.

It's also good evidence that a guy running for President is going to go to places that make him look good to a target demographic

McCain was a horrible person who used his military service as a rhetorical shield to make war anywhere the MIC could make money. Trump rightly points out that McCain's service wasn't even all that honorable, he was a rat.

There are ways to do that without saying that getting captured as a soldier is worthy of scorn.

Name a person you think would not have been fired except for Trump being a manchild. The reason Trump got rid of so many people is that so many of them were horrible. The reason so many of them were horrible is that DC is full of them.

I just posted a public tweet where Trump complains about Sessions not investigating Hillary, 2 months before Sessions was out. You know, that thing we were talking about that Trump supposedly dropped the investigation out of the kindness of his heart? Any response to that?

We have years of Trump being in office and speaking with veterans and their families and they all come away talking about how much love Trump gave them. If you aren't familiar with Trump's well-documented love of the average soldier, you are either misinformed or uninformed.

I just posted a public tweet where Trump complains about Sessions not investigating Hillary, 2 months before Sessions was out. You know, that thing we were talking about that Trump supposedly dropped the investigation out of the kindness of his heart? Any response to that?

Sure, what's the actual wording of Trump's tweet:

“‘Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.’ Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the ‘other side’ including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump campaign, Russian collusion by Dems – and so much more. Open up the papers & documents without redaction? Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!”

This is not some blanket call to prosecute Hillary: this is the observation that, far from being a Justice Department that claims to be neutral, they are seriously investigating Trump while not touching amyone else. Hillary ran her own classified email server, Trump did not collude with Russia, which did Jeff Session's FBI investigate? Remember that Sessions was coerced into recusing on the logic that since he participated in Trump's campaign he couldn't be a neutral observer. Thankfully, after that, the FBI was totally politically neutral throughout the Trump presidency.

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You realize that what you’re describing is marketing right? Maybe the man will surprise me, but I don’t see actions that live up to the hype. He hasn’t cleaned up Washington, he didn’t fix the border problems, he might have gotten lucky that no major wars broke out on his watch, but I didn’t think he was the cause of it. So what I’m left with is an incompetent ruler with excellent branding. Take away the branding, the hats, the merch, the big talk, and he’s really not that much different from GW Bush or Bill Clinton.

no major wars broke out on his watch

Wars aren't an act of God that just happen, the last dozen major wars America has participated in were all designed by politicians. Is Trump "lucky" that he didn't decide to decapitate Gaddafi? Maybe he got lucky that he didn't invade Iraq?

So what I’m left with is an incompetent ruler with excellent branding.

I'm watching the Joe Rogan interview right now and it's fascinating -- Trump talking about political deals, environmental impact, construction, entering the White House, tariffs and the economy, etc. etc. -- and then I go on The Motte and some guy says that Trump is obviously incompetent because he didn't do whatever it is you're personally in favor of.

and he’s really not that much different from GW Bush or Bill Clinton.

That's half the point, right? That Trump is a 90's Democrat and the left went crazy and so he became a Republican. But that's also a silly self-limiting frame, because Trump is obviously better than both GW Bush and Clinton. (Ruby Ridge, "Read my lips," etc.)

Wars aren’t an act of God, but at the same time, a lot of the decisions about when to start one hinge more on conditions like military readiness, weather conditions, and the time needed to build up troops and material to carry forward an invasion. China isn’t stay out of Taiwan because Biden is a badass. They simply don’t yet have the assets in place to successfully invade Taiwan.

Biden, to his credit, also didn't start any wars, probably because he is genuinely upset over the pointless loss of his son. That doesn't mean Biden was lucky or had marketing, it means he resisted the strong temptations of the MIC to manufacture new excuses to go to war. Which is Trump's credit! Every prior president going back 40 years started a new war, until Trump. It's not as though we have a sudden shortage of conflicts over which we could have gone to war.

Biden, to his credit, also didn't start any wars

The Biden administration had a significant hand in both creating the conditions for the Ukrainian conflict as well as sustaining it after the fact. If that doesn't count as "starting a war" I'm not sure what does.

I guess you could call it a "police action", which humorously is exactly what the Russians did this time around. Might as well be the Russians' Korean War, honestly.

(Also, why send Hunter to Ukraine in the first place? Getting [them] ready for that war was his fucking job.)

I think the Biden admin gets a lot of (bad) credit for the Ukrainian situation, but I will grant that it's a different category from the kinds of conflicts US presidents have gotten involved in until now. (For one, putting American soldiers in forever wars is extremely unpopular, there's some part of the body politic that thinks it's a great deal for us to only have to fight by proxy.)

That's just TDS with extra steps.

How much can I dislike Trump without it being TDS?

I don't care or expect you to agree with my criticisms of him, but if anyone who thinks he's a con, a huckster, and yes, corrupt enough to become dictator if handed the opportunity has irrational TDS, fine- I can only ask if you have BDS or ODS or CLDS?

I can't convince you to believe the things I believe, I guess, but I think it's your attitude that's wrong with America today, not Trump's.

I've actually believed in America my entire life. Not without cynicism and skepticism, and I'm not going to give you my credentials to prove myself to an Internet rando (and get doxxed), but I've taken an oath more than once and meant it, and much of my disgust over the Discourse today is that I don't think you guys (and by that I mean partisans on the right and left) do.

Win or lose Trump is doing glorious things and awakening a spirit that wants to build America and make it great again.

Dude, I'm sure you really believe that and having read your posts over the last few months, there isn't much else I can say that would be charitable, but I will say that if Trump becomes president I will genuinely wish for him to prove you right and me wrong.

You will never do anything glorious.

Maybe not. And what is your glory? Chanting "MAGA" at doubters?

How much can I dislike Trump without it being TDS?

What do you dislike about the man that is original to your person? Your specific and personal preference, informed to the best of your ability from neutral sources? And what do you dislike about the man that actually or effectually originates in those with TDS?

Take my brother. He doesn't have TDS but he has beliefs that come from it via journalists with TDS. He likes Trump-as-the-comedian, but hates the effect he views Trump as having on the degradation and divisiveness in political rhetoric. Degradation maybe, I can't be partial as I'm on record so often talking about my contempt for WASP decorum. Divisiveness no, that causation is backward. They could have taken the constituent concerns behind Trump's success, chiefly economics. "Doesn't matter how outsourcing benefits the wealthy, it hurts domestic jobs." Done. "Racism and xenophobia are bad but it's not racist to understand the basic economic impacts of minimally restricted immigration on the labor pool." Done. Legitimize those concerns, Trump loses issue-level success. Acknowledge voter concerns, Trump loses structural-critical-level success. A pivot, a good economy, they win easily, if not in 2020 then 2024 and beyond. They didn't. They screamed racist and ran hoaxes and every time one failed instead of pausing for contemplation they doubled down. Again and again. We are in Year 8 of them doubling down on Trump. We are in Year 12 of ever-intensifying racial rhetoric.

I could go to other issues but I won't save this. Some of my friends often talk about whatever latest bad story of Elon Musk. I think when I listen to them, how pleasant it must be to live in such a world; that everyone who disagrees with you is incompetent and evil.

There's nothing aligning about acknowledging a person's strengths. I'm a fan of Dropout and especially Brennan Lee Mulligan, and I'm amused, probably in some way like the father is at his four year old being petulant but in a fundamentally innocent and harmless way, when the guy rants about capitalism. His life is the hyper-niche product of the absolutely relentless process of profit-finding in capitalism. He would be nothing without it, or in a communist paradigm, a scarily effective apparatchik. Still, he's brilliant, funny, earnest and full of love, however misguided, and he is just terrifically naive. (As many but not all good artists are.) Liking the guy doesn't mean I agree with him, and that I disagree with him isn't an indict for the many things he's good at. Trump is the living embodiment of "being good at things," that's just first-principle truth as extrapolated from language. To be "effective" is to be described in terms that categorically apply to Trump, so for him to be "not" those things, not competent, not effective, not intelligent, a conman, a huckster, those indict the language rather than the man. You would need to invent new words, and the etymology of those words would just be "Yeah he's competent, but he's an asshole."

Doesn't mean you have to like him, doesn't mean you have to agree with him. The world is as it is and has always been because the groups of people who disagree with each other in and over making the biggest decisions are each very good at what they do. History's decided on the narrow margin between competing competents.

How much can I dislike Trump without it being TDS?

I feel bad about piling-on here because i feel like this is a legitimate question that deserves a proper long form answer, but i want to contrast it with your statement that

...I think he will epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world.

Because to me this is one of the core TDS "tells". Much like some of the arguments about Trump being senile in the comments about his JRE appearance upthread, I find myself wondering if we watched the same podcast. I genuinely have trouble placing myself in the mindset of somone who would believe this.

Rather, while I can see how somone might have believed this back in 2016, I don't understand how someone who has been paying attention to the last 15-20 years of US foreign policy could reasonably conclude that given how Trump's first term went, a second term would be likely to do more damage to the US's standing and long-term interests than say, 4 more years of having somone like Clinton or Blinken as Secretary of State, or a hypothetical second Biden term where he isn't forced out of the race.

How much can I dislike Trump without it being TDS?

Say you are open borders or some other core policy disagreement with him. Then just leave it at that.

but if anyone who thinks he's a con, a huckster, and yes, corrupt enough to become dictator if handed the opportunity has irrational TDS

Yes, thinking that Donald Trump is going to become a dictator is TDS. Likewise, in the fields of construction reality TV politics business and marketing he's probably one of the most successful Americans ever. The guy redefined construction in Manhattan and turned his properties into a billion-dollar empire, spending a life constructing properties and projects all around the world, synonymous with luxury, just the ones in the public consciousness, then he got bored and did reality TV and dated supermodels and became President of the United States in his 70s -- sure, he's a conman because he did Steaks or whatever. Yeah, Trump really didn't do anything all that interesting really, and you're perceptive to see right through his little deception game.

Dude, I'm sure you really believe that and having read your posts over the last few months, there isn't much else I can say that would be charitable, but I will say that if Trump becomes president I will genuinely wish for him to prove you right and me wrong.

We have rockets that can land on towers in the air now. We are going to build a spirit of building things again, we are going to make America great again, greater than ever before. We have the capacity, we have the smartest people in the world, we have factories lying empty ready to turn on, we have so much potential, nobody has ever had potential like we have. America is the New World, the Classical era and the Renaissance have nothing on what we can do.

Maybe not. And what is your glory? Chanting "MAGA" at doubters?

My friends and I are some of the smartest people in the world, and some of those people are even here on this forum, and I believe we can all move forward onto great and glorious things.

We have rockets that can land on towers in the air now. We are going to build a spirit of building things again, we are going to make America great again, greater than ever before. We have the capacity, we have the smartest people in the world, we have factories lying empty ready to turn on, we have so much potential, nobody has ever had potential like we have. America is the New World, the Classical era and the Renaissance have nothing on what we can do.

Fun question: in the hypothetical situation in which it turns out that Trump accomplishes none of the American renaissance you expect, please explain why you were gullible enough to believe this.

Yes, thinking that Donald Trump is going to become a dictator is TDS.

I don't think he's going to become dictator. I think he wouldn't turn it down. I don't think he has a plan to become dictator, because that would be too much planning.

I could possibly be wrong about him, but it's based on what I have seen him do and how he acts. This is not "derangement" or irrational fear or hatred of the man. I don't think he's Hitler. I don't think he's a fascist, and I don't think he wants to kill Group X. I think several other presidents would have been willing to become a dictator if given the opportunity.

Honestly, if there is any Trump-related derangement going on, your hagiographic description of him as if he's one of the greatest Americans to ever live strikes me as far more detached from the reality of the man.

We have rockets that can land on towers in the air now. We are going to build a spirit of building things again, we are going to make America great again, greater than ever before. We have the capacity, we have the smartest people in the world, we have factories lying empty ready to turn on, we have so much potential, nobody has ever had potential like we have. America is the New World, the Classical era and the Renaissance have nothing on what we can do.

I mean, that's all great, but the "we" that did that is not you, and it's not Trump. I'd love to see Trump bring about this new Golden Age you're smoking, but it's certainly not here. Right now it's words.

My friends and I are some of the smartest people in the world, and some of those people are even here on this forum, and I believe we can all move forward onto great and glorious things.

Maybe you are the genius you say you are, but bold words are not accomplishments, or glory. It's nice to believe things.

I don't think he's going to become dictator. I think he wouldn't turn it down. I don't think he has a plan to become dictator, because that would be too much planning.

To add on to this for @SlowBoy's benefit: lots of people would take kingship if it were offered. I would, if I were immortal and had some method of avoiding the incentive traps.

Most of them never try to take over a country.

I don't think he has a plan to become dictator, because that would be too much planning.

Go listen to the Joe Rogan interview or something, the career Donald Trump has had requires oodles of planning, the man is simply smart enough that he can plan and improvise on the plans and execute faster than most of the people around him. The idea that Trump can't plan or won't plan out of some personal foible is TDS. The man is one of the most successful people on the planet, that doesn't just happen.

Honestly, if there is any Trump-related derangement going on, your hagiographic description of him as if he's one of the greatest Americans to ever live strikes me as far more detached from the reality of the man.

The man took his father's modest real estate business in Queens and turned it into a premire luxury empire in New York. He convinced dozens of successful men to back his moonshot Trump Tower project, which he turned into a symbol of strength that revitalized the entire city. He built a tower at the city at the center of the world and put his name on it. Celebrities lined up to live there. The Trump name became synonymous with luxury all over the world. How many people could do that? There is not a single person having this discussion, here, twitter, TV, cable news, blogging -- capable of doing any of that, and Trump had a big enough vision to see it all from the beginning.

Trump turned that into an incredibly lucrative real estate empire, doing constant deals, being involved in projects all over the world, synonymous with luxury. He dated supermodels, consecutively, raised a family with them. Did business all over the world, went bankrupt a few times, reinvented himself in reality TV, casinos. The man is involved in hundreds of projects that don't reach

Fine, none of that means anything, he's just a businessman at this point, and we have lots of those. But within that world he's been incredibly, exceptionally successful, one of the richest men in the world, objectively loaded with one of the most interesting biographies in American history. His uncle had the Tesla patents and was a professor at MIT. His third wife was a Slovenian supermodel.

Then he gives all that up to run for President, and he runs on the message that the American dream is dead, and nobody believes in it anymore, but that's wrong, we're the greatest country on earth, and we're going to be greater than ever before, we have the people and the factories and the talent and the work, and that's what America is, and it's so easy, I've done it myself and I will teach you.

I don't think this is being hagiographic: The man is so ludicrously competent and successful that few people are even capable of judging it. Nobody wants to believe it, everyone has to be cynical and above-it-all. The man is just constantly working on hundreds of projects that nobody hears about, and so we just hear about Trump steaks or the University or some other silly throwaway remark he didn't consider important at all, and we talk about these trivial nothings. It's so much easier to believe that he's a conman, or that cynicism is warranted and valid and always good -- and it sounds ridiculous to say: Actually, Trump is good, and that doesn't come with qualifications or criticism, because he's right. He's right about everything, we have the capacity to be great and he's done it before and he's going to show us.

Donald Trump is literally rewriting history, this is how people are going to think about it in the future. In 2015 he started the primary with 1%, and he took that and grew it into one of the most successful political movements in American history, he reignited the imagionations of millions of people. Nobody fifty years from now is going to remember Trump Steaks, or Stormy Daniels, or whatever the controversy du jour that cynics are talking about in the corner. People are going to remember that this man saved his country, he got shot in the head and chanted "Fight, fight, fight!," you don't know how to win but I will teach you, we can be greater than ever before, you're not ordinary, we are the greatest people on Earth. We talk like he talks now, we think about him constantly, some of his worst enemies have become his greatest allies. If Naruto Uzumaki was real and in the world, I woudln't sit around saying, gee, this Naruto guy has a lot of flaws, I need to be rationally critical of him, maybe he's done some cool things but he's not that great, really. I would say, wow, amazing, how can I be more like this guy? And this is what Trump is, this is what he does, he's the main character. That's the world he's creating, and instead of sitting on the sidelines scoffing at how at least I'm not a sycophant, I'm rational, look at me, I can say something negative about Trump -- I'm going to admire everything the man is capable of and figure out how to be more and more like him. That's actually the only way to Make America Great Again, to dream bigger than ever before because we are the greatest people of all time, ever, in the whole history of the human race, and it's our task to build the new world.

What are the investments to make if one believes that Trumpworld will arrive in 50 years? Given that few seem to really believe it, it should make bank if true.

Probably some of the tech visionaries, if Elon comes anywhere close to Mars then his companies, some of the most valuable anywhere in the world, would be currently dramatically undervalued. Trump wants to dramatically expand energy and construction and those are good bets. Tariffs are intended as a policy to increase American manufacturing, which could imply a genre of good investments. If RFK is able to effectuate change at FDA it'd be good to bet on the health of the average person, and maybe against the worst excesses of big pharma.

The man took his father's modest real estate business in Queens and turned it into a premire luxury empire in New York.

If he sold said business and put the money into the market, or indeed just handed it to any of the major other family owned real estate companies in that region (the Dursts, the Kushners, whatever) he’d have made more money (so much more that he could build the Trump tower and not have to lease out a single floor), I don’t know that that reflects well on him.

I think this was a made-up attack line from cynics right when Trump ran, it's very obviously not true, very silly, and reflects badly on the people who believe it. It doesn't work like that, you can't just liquidate your whole net worth and invest in stocks and sit around earning money.

https://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/

Here's one estimate from 2015. They claim that Trump would have made money if he'd invested everything after 1988 -- yeah no, that's silly, he'd already turned his father's business into a major real-estate empire by then. You can't just play this game by picking any arbitrary year. Now that you've been massively, phenomonally, unbelievably successful, you're really a failure because the stock market beats you after this arbitrary date.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2021/10/11/its-official-trump-would-be-richer-if-he-had-just-invested-his-inheritance-into-the-sp500/

Here's one where Forbes concludes that Trump had beaten the market significantly, up until corona. Which means, at this point, we get to point and laugh at the failure of Donald Trump: haha, you lost valuation while you were president of the United States. You shluld have cashed it all in and bet on black Donald.

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The returns of S&P 500 over decades have been huge and are based on owning some of the best businesses and also some business with deep state and goverment connections. You can't use this argument to argue against people who manage to be very successful because they did not perform to the level of S&P 500.

Also, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Maybe it will be more impressive than the market over 40 years.

I dunno how successful Trump has been, but the skill set to grew successful business is one that can't be so easily dismissed by the alternative of just putting your money towards an index. You actually need people who do the work to benefit from owning a small slice of the top 500 businesses.

into the market, or indeed just handed it to any of the major other family owned real estate companies in that region (the Dursts, the Kushners, whatever) he’d have made more money (so much more that he could build the Trump tower and not have to lease out a single floor), I don’t know that that reflects well on him.

Handing out his money to the Kushners if by these you mean the family that includes Jared Kushner whose father was a con man, wouldn't have made Trump much money, because he would have just given them his money. And dealing with them otherwise from a weaker spot and giving them money expecting a return, if that is what you mean, might have ended with them conning Trump or giving him a bad deal.

Joseph Kushner developed a portfolio of 4,000 apartments. He left the business to his sons, Murray and Charles Kushner,

And as per the quote, they have been already successful apparently while Trump build more generational wealth from a lower base if indeed he is as successful as Slowboy portrays.

You can't just be the son of Kushner dynasty by being Trump. Just like Trump's own rise isn't the same as more self made men who started from a lower spot. It is good for people outside the biggest dynasties to also work to build bigger generational wealth. Just like you can't just dismiss success by pointing at putting the money at S&P 500.

Although they did join together eventually. Plus, you haven't provided any evidence that the Kushners could use the same money by Trump, from the same point (modest real estate business claimed by Slowboy), to be more successful.

I doubt you have really investigated the issue in the depth it requires and made the calculations.

And of course Charles Kushner tried to screw over his brother in law. https://eu.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2020/12/23/prosecuted-chris-christie-charles-kushner-pardoned-donald-trump/4034767001/

Charles Kushner, it turned out, had hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law during a family feud and sent it to his sister.

More: The events that changed Jared Kushner's path

Mask plea: Chris Christie releases ad targeting 'all those people who refuse to wear a mask'

"Of all the sordid cases my office had been involved with over the past few years, this was a new one. Not what I was expecting," Christie wrote in his book, "Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey and The Power of In-Your-Face Politics."

However, since the Kushner family and Trump family joined together and he pardoned Charles maybe this episode does reveal something negative about Trump too.

Naruto? Really?

Why don't you just compare him to Superman and ask if I'd dare to be skeptical of the Man of Steel?

This much apple-polishing would make the scriptwriters of The Apprentice blush. But hey, I hope you're right and Trump proves to be the God-King we need and not the God-King we deserve.

You're too jaded to see what's right in front of you. The billionaire rocket space man sees it. A Kennedy sees it. Vivek, JD Vance, Tulsi, etc. The Trump coalition is made up of many of Trump's worst former enemies, because he's a literal anime hero. This is why America is the greatest country on earth, because we believe in the power of friendship, we're going to fix the entire world, it's cringe all the way down. Trump started a movement and this is how the future will remember us: the Trump Era. The Trump Era was when we had Michael Jackson and Muhammed Ali and the internet and Trump. The Trump Era was either the era where Elon Musk brought mankind to Mars, or the last era where people dreamed big enough to believe it was possible. They had coca-cola, and big macs, and monster trucks, and guns. They were the fattest, loudest, dumbest, sickest, most foolish, most gullible, most annoying people on Earth. They did the most important things that have ever been done. They were the greatest people on Earth.

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I think Trump will be more damaging to the economy, and I think he will epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world. I think he will be an embarrassment who fails to accomplish any of the things his followers think he will (just like last time) and what he does accomplish he will fuck up.

People said this in 2016 too. Not saying you are wrong, but it's ascribes too much power to him or the wrong motives. Trump was constantly tweeting about the stock market and the strength of the US economy during his first term ,so it's evident the economy is important to him and he's not going to fuck it up if he can prevent it. Also, I am skeptical at how can he simultaneously fail to accomplish anything but also fuck things up or irreparably ruin America' standing. Even during Covid, America led the world in developing a vaccine, and then Trump stimulus programs engendered a rapid economic recovery as other countries stalled out with endless lockdowns and relapses.

Given how well the stock market has done in recent months in light of the >50% prospect of a Trump victory, I think market participants are optimistic, as am I. He will pass stimulus, tax cuts...typical stuff. Inflation and debt will keep going but but it won't lead to crisis, just more of the same stuff we've become accustomed to over the past 12 years. The tariffs will not do much either, similar to his first term.

The election process sucks in that America will be more divided regardless of the outcome . Instead of elections being discreate events, they are merged into continuous events where the campaigning begins at the end of the present cycle. If it's close then there may be a repeat of 2020, but it will not lead to crisis, but it will be another slog. Elections have become too high stakes, and it would be nice to see a return to the 80s, 90s, or 2000s when there was not so much at stake or such a big deal.

The only way to actually do that though is to disempower the state to do those things. It’s important because it’s everywhere doing everything and therefore you either take it over and use it to devour your enemies or you get devoured yourself. Taking for example LGBTQ issues. In 1990, the big issue was basically state recognition of gay marriages. This actually (on paper) affected maybe 3% of the us population and the wedding industry. Fast forward 30 years and now the issues of LGBTQ touch everything from education and child protection to medical care to sports and restrooms. The government controls very much more just on this set of issues alone. Go on to environmental issues and it’s now things like the car you drive, the kinds of appliances you own, the cost of electricity and fuel, getting roads built and so on. Given just how intrusive the government is over the government of Bill Clinton in 1992, it’s not much of a wonder that a much more powerful state is a much bigger prize that the elites of all stripes are eager to control. If the survival of an industry depends on the outcome of an election, or your right to know if your child has a gender identity issue hinges on the results of an election, elections become extremely important.

Drain the government of power over people and industries and nobody would care. If I could simply choose my school board and know they would not insert their political beliefs into the classrooms, I wouldn’t be super worried. People in 1900 barely knew who was running the central government because it didn’t actually touch them personally.

Well, if he wins, I'd honestly love to say in four years "I was wrong, Trump was great." I am not putting any money on that bet, though.

Probably for the best, give how likely you would be to lose that bet. It's not like Trump has to do 'great' to not 'epically fuck up,' which was the bar you set.

From your post, you'd be wrong if Trump just did as well as last time. Heck, you'd still be wrong if he did worse than he did last time.

Okay, well, if he's elected and he doesn't epically fuck up and we're no worse off than before, I'll be wrong.

It feels like a race between the Antichrist and the Whore Of Babylon.

If the seven-headed beast makes an appearance, we can say the plural community has gone too far.

This is basically where I'm at. My vote doesn't matter, but it's going to Kamala (unless I get particularly annoyed at something in the next week). Regardless, it's a bad sign for our institutions that these are the choices we've been given.

My personal wish casting is Republicans take the legislative branch, to make all of her policy platform stillborn. And she wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote (appearing slightly more likely in recent polls). The wailing and gnashing of teeth from everyone would be amazing.

My personal wish casting is Republicans take the legislative branch, to make all of her policy platform stillborn. And she wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote (appearing slightly more likely in recent polls). The wailing and gnashing of teeth from everyone would be amazing.

This doesn't work. The permanent staff in the executive branch like her agenda, so they will implement it. As seen with Biden's ability to massively increase immigration admittance with a few EOs. For your alleged preference, you want the opposite, Trump in the White House (stymied at every turn by his employees he cant fire) and a Democrat congress (further frustrating his purposes). A Democrat executive can enact almost everything they want solo except for increased welfare policies.

to make all of her policy platform stillborn.

If the last few presidential terms have taught us anything, it's that the executive branch retains extremely significant discretion to remake policy without legislative say so, precisely because the legislature has been asleep at the switch for a generation. The courts have clawed back some of that power, but the Biden immigration influx was a policy choice implemented solely by executive fiat, as was student loan debt relief (which was reimplemented in a lesser form after Scotus struck it down the first time), as was the seeding of the "whole of government" with DEI practices and racial set-asides.

Regardless, it's a bad sign for our institutions that these are the choices we've been given.

Politicians have always been underwhelming though, and Trump IMHO at least is a departure from that.

I wouldn't count on it. The Republicans in the legislative branch have purposely thrown away their majority, and caved on every significant issue the Uniparty truly wanted. FISA courts stayed, endless money for foreign wars stayed.

I wouldn't count on them to serve as any significant check in Kamala's agenda, especially the worst parts of that the Uniparty clearly wants. "Misinformation" and "Hate speech" laws, further weaponization of the DOJ against political opponents like Musk, endless wars, a "path to citizenship" for all the illegals they've shipped to battleground states and/or quietly allowing illegals to vote by making it impossible to check the citizenship status of voters or coercing Soros DA's from prosecuting them.

They only way to block a Kamala/Uniparty agenda is if Trump is butt in seat in the Oval Office.

The Republicans in the legislative branch have purposely thrown away their majority, and caved on every significant issue the Uniparty truly wanted. FISA courts stayed, endless money for foreign wars stayed.

So you're annoyed Republicans have not used their legislative power to vote against the policies initiated by the Republican Party under GWB in the 2000s? Why exactly did you expect them to do so?

I agree that all of those things are bad, and I suspect some of them will be worse 4 years from now even in my "ideal" scenario.

What I don't see is Trump effectively pushing back against them. His election will cause a refocusing of the progressive movement, who will make effective state-level efforts and sabotage his leadership of the federal government. But they'll barely need to do anything to sabotage Trump, since he's pretty much self-sabotaging: he's lazy and erratic, and although he has all the right enemies, he has all the wrong enemies too.

I don't know. Look at the number of people who came into the country from 2016-2020 vs 2021-2024.

Trump isn't going to fix problems, but he's not going destroy the country with open borders and amnesties.

What I don't see is Trump effectively pushing back against them.

Why not? Look at the four years we already had with him. Yes, the generals rolled Trump and lied to him or sabotaged pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan. But they weren't able to talk him into new wars. Try as they might to stop it, Trump successfully fixed the border. Even without a full wall, the remain in Mexico policy was an enormous success getting numbers down and discouraging the attempt. There was relative peace in the Middle East, and Trump's executive actions kept Iran boxed in and without funds to create proxy wars all around Israel.

No, we didn't get the CIA shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered in the wind. I think we can largely blame Pompeo for that, and Trump will have better people around him this time. Yeah, we still got massive deep state censorship in violation of the 1st amendment. But that was before Elon bought Twitter.

We may not get mass deportations in another Trump admin. But I'd expect him to fix the border same as he did before. I'd expect Iran will be boxed in again as best as can be done, denying them assets to fund proxy wars. I'd expect no new wars, and maybe even having one or two buttoned up. Might look similar to Biden's pullout from Afghanistan, but I'll take what I can get. That's on the generals IMHO.

I think this is a weird expectation because, frankly, whether or not there is a new war isn't entirely up to US decisions. A foreign actor may, potentially, act in such a way such that the correct response is (unfortunately) military action back against them. You can't expect, necessarily, that any President won't be sitting in the Oval Office when that happens.

That's not to say that the President doesn't have a lot of agency here.

What I'd expect in the best light from any Presidency is not to instigate or embroil us in conflicts without very good reason but, if necessary, to respond in the way most likely to advance our interests.

In some cases that will be ending a war. In some (rare) cases that will be starting or joining or escalating a war.

Compare where we were in 2017 to where we were in 2021. Was the state more or less intrusive into our lives?

Now, you might say that's unfair, and there were new circumstances that gave the state more opportunities to seize control that Trump was unable to effectively push against. And yes: that's exactly my point. Even his greatest success during the pandemic (getting the vaccine developed ASAP) was seized from him by bureaucrats who delayed its release until after the election for the sake of "political neutrality."

Inevitably, there will be new circumstances that arise from now until 2028. The state will maneuver around him, and he'll just flail around at best. War with China? We need copious controls to make sure no one is misled by misinformation. New pandemic? Now we know better how to do a real shutdown for public health. Etc.

That trend is inevitable, regardless of who's in office. My belief is that Trump's flailing will likelier hurt the market and my 401k worse than Kamala's empty suit.

That trend is inevitable, regardless of who's in office. My belief is that Trump's flailing will likelier hurt the market and my 401k worse than Kamala's empty suit.

Somehow I don’t see Trump taxing unrealized gains. So that’s one mark against your 401k

Trump undoing this terrible, actually destructive tax on theoretical non-real numbers would be worth the entire 4 years. And I'm not just talking about proposed future taxes. I mean the CAMT that was baked into the IRA of 2022. It's brain-dead tax policy and will make America a worse place to live.

I said the same thing about the Trump tax cuts the first time around: it was worth it all.

I will admit, one of my reasons for wanting trump to win is not wanting to have the motte obsessed with unfalsifiable theories about voter fraud for 6 straight weeks.

But I have to ask- what economic mismanagement do you expect from trump? He’ll fuck the budget up, but fiscal sanity is too much to expect from the US government.

I will admit, one of my reasons for wanting trump to win is not wanting to have the motte obsessed with unfalsifiable theories about voter fraud for 6 straight weeks.

2 for 1 if he gets a filibuster proof senate and pushes through the civil service reforms! The FBI might start securing elections in the future.

The odds of that are very slim, right?

Yes. 60 Vote Republican Senate is basically impossible right now.

Tariffs are generally a bad idea in the modern world. While consumption taxes in general are good, by applying them only to imports they have to be much higher (and this cause much more dead weight loss) than a general sales tax would.

A lot of the things said about tariffs by the media are stupid and pretty much just campaigning for the Democrats, but that doesn't actually make tariffs good.

Tariffs aren’t a great idea, but the US economy is undertaxed and putting a consumption tax on manufactured goods(which is what tariffs would amount to in practice) is a great way to fix that. Trump will simply balloon the deficit rather than have tariffs high enough to cause damage.

Now taxing unrealized gains, on the other hand….

Undertaxed? I was unaware that economists agreed on some optimal non-zero amount of taxation for purely economic reasons.

Trump has been a bit inconsistent about tariffs. Sometimes he has talked about them being solely protectionist; other times he has talked about using them to force other countries to bring down their trade barriers (leading to less tariffs). I’m not sure where exactly he will come out.

He does care about manufacturing. The single best way for him to influence manufacturing is making energy cheap in America. He and Vance seems to support nuclear among others. He can directly help shepherd these things via EPA. Question is how quickly can you get these programs off the ground. The manufacturing jobs probably would t be during his term but the building of plants etc would be so he could point to an employment benefit to make the case for a Vance presidency.

Tariffs would be much better received by the D faction if they were packaged as a carbon/global environmental-and-worker-protection tax, which is a big part of why manufacturing moved to China in the first place.

Of course, because the Ds benefit the most from dodging those taxes (in the same way, and for the same reasons, that they benefit from open borders- they suddenly stop being so generous with other peoples' money once it starts costing them directly), you can expect them to pivot away from environmentalism if such a pricing scheme were to be implemented.

epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world.

I don’t get this. I’ve heard people repeat it a lot. People respect and like countries that have a high quality of life. They want to move to countries that have high earnings potential and safety. They also like cultural products. America’s cultural products aren’t going away, so what we are left with is QoL, earnings, and safety. Is the candidate who supports DEI and more immigration going to increase QoL and safety?

But also, why the hell would you even care about what someone in Kurdistan, or China, or Bangladesh thinks about you? During the Cold War, much of the world hated America for propaganda reasons, and who cares? Lots of the Middle East hated us because of our wars, and yet… it doesn’t matter. I don’t think people should care about how “popular” their country is on the world stage. We should care about how popular it is among our citizens, which would involve not incessantly telling about racism, slavery, and oppressive institutions.

Agree. What does this even mean. America has always been blamed on a lot of ill in the world . This didn't change under Trump. The fact so many people want to come to America, not just for benefits, but for jobs and to attend universities , shows it cannot be that bad. The leadership of Germany, UK, France, Japan, etc. may not have liked Trump or would preferred someone else, but they were more than willing to work with him and respected the office.

I think it literally just means that lib aligned PMC will be embarrassed at cocktail parties.

If that sounds uncharitable, I’m quite serious. “Global Standing” is what a tiny percentage of the international elite feel about the USA, not the unwashed public at large.

Why though? You could say the same about any level of geography. "I don't think people should care how "popular" their town is on the national stage" etc.

“your town is unpopular” may mean that the quality of life of your family is negatively affected, as there is fewer investment in your town. It may also mean you’re individually doing something wrong, because you could be part of the problem of your town. But this doesn’t apply cross-nationally. Countries that are regionally unpopular (Israel) may still have high QoL. It’s only an issue if their safety is affected, which is distinct from whether the proles of Honduras have a distaste for your country.

I don't know what to say, I think Israel suffers terribly from being so unpopular on the global stage.

Would you have been happier with Desantis against Kalama, or Trump against Newsom?

My general feelings are the same as his, and I would have quite happily voted for Desantis in the first Newsom and Newsom in the second - preferably Desantis first, but Newsom at least can tell which way the wind is blowing on the occasional issue, while Harris seems happy to roll the 2020 tape until it runs out beneath her.

I'd rather rewind to 2016 and pit Sanders against Rand Paul. Whichever won, it would have been pretty interesting!

DeSantis against Newsom would have been a fun election, honestly.

Maybe very slightly, but I'd still have been pretty unhappy. It's within the realm of possibility, though unlikely, that DeSantis could convince me to vote for him. Newsom I hold in about as much contempt as I hold Harris.

Then I don’t know what you are asking for. DeSantis is quite clearly an exceptional governor. He doesn’t just mouth certain positions but excels at running government and was tested under extreme pressures during covid era and came through with flying colors. He is pretty much the definition of “serious politician.” So if the complaint is “we don’t have serious politicians” why sour on DeSantis?

Well, I do have criteria beyond seriousness. Like I'd actually like to be ideologically aligned with them. Obviously I'm unlikely to vote for a right-winger unless he's just that awesome or his opponent is just that terrible.

Sure. But RDS is that awesome and Harris is just that terrible. It seems your concern isn’t really about Trump; it is about Harris.

It's both. Honestly kind of baffling to me that I wrote a long, admittedly heated post about how much I dislike both of them, and because my disdain is not 100% perfectly balanced (or, let's be real, because I have any disdain at all for your candidate), the conclusion is that I don't have real concerns.

RDS awesome? I agree that he's serious and capable; that doesn't mean I agree with his politics. A smart and capable politician can still be working towards ends I disagree with.

No I’m calling out your fake both sides here. You would generally hate anyone on the R side. But yet your post was basically “both candidates suck because they aren’t serious.” But when you peel the onion back a bit it isn’t the seriousness that you object to on the R side; it is the policies. Which of course that’s reasonable! But say that—don’t complain about candidate quality.

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So when it comes down to it, all the nonsense about Trump's particular badness is irrelevant. It's "vote blue no matter who". You blame the MAGA people for driving the grownups out, but you'd take a Democrat over a Republican "grownup" anyway, so there's no reason a Republican should care about your ranking between MAGA and grownups.

Do you even read before you start banging your keyboard? No. I have voted for Republicans in the past (not often, but occasionally) and I just said I could be persuaded to vote for DeSantis. (In a DeSantis vs. Newsom match, for example, or DeSantis vs. Harris, I might hold my nose and vote for DeSantis.) I wrote a lengthy post about how I am not "voting blue no matter who."

Sorry I was unclear. It was an either question between the two, not whether you'd prefer either two to the current slate. But still, you've kind of answered what I was trying to get out. You go through such a long rant about how uniquely bad these two candidates are; but the next two most likely are 'maybe very slightly' better?

Well, not sure how to quantify "very slightly better." Yes, I think the entire slate of both parties has been pretty shitty for the past few years, but Trump and Harris are pretty much the nadir, IMO.

Trump and Harris are pretty much the nadir, IMO.

Actually, Nader’s last run for president was in 2008.

I think Harris will continue our inflationary money-isn't-real spiral into economic doom, hand out more gobs of cash to whatever identity group is most effective at yelling and screaming, and I think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will roll her like a floured chicken breast.

Don't forget the millions on millions of unvetted foreigners allowed in, allowed to stay, and who will drop anchor babies. Just look at this. It's obscene. One candidate is very clearly trying to ethnically cleanse me, my family, and my children. The other one isn't, and is instead saying "send them back." Mass deportations are a topic of conversation. As dumb as the talking point is, one wants sex changes for male prisoners paid for by the state, and the other doesn't. One wants boys in girls sports and men in women's sports, and the other doesn't.

who I believe actually loves America as much as I believe he goes to church on Sunday and has ever read the Bible in his life.

I think you're wrong about this. He's been clear for decades that, if not loving America, he identifies with it and takes it personally when we are taken advantage of (trade, NATO) and made the fool.

I've never before voted for either major party in a Presidential election, but I am this year, and it's an easy choice, and I feel better about that I do about Jorgensen or Johnson or Stein. I'm still partial to my Nader vote, though.

One candidate is very clearly trying to ethnically cleanse me, my family, and my children.

This isn’t ethnic cleansing. She’s not deporting white Americans. She’s not forbidding white Americans from marrying other whites. She’s just importing lots of people for deficit financed cheap labor. This is bad, but words have meanings.

If the Plantation of Ulster (where my ancestors on my Dad's side were sent to settle North Ireland to displace my ancestors on my mother's side) is widely considered ethnic cleansing then this sure as hell is. Unless you think the Paddies were just being a bunch of whiny babies.

As an Ulsterman myself, you do have to point out that this was a forcible relocation though as in the locals where literally forced off the prime land and onto less desirable land so that my ancestors could take it. In Springfield 30% of the population had gone for entirely unrelated reasons prior to the later immigration.

Even if we consider the Plantation of Ulster as ethnic cleansing (and we probably should) it is very very different than what is happening with immigration now. No-one external is forcing America to take immigrants and put them in places that have been depopulated by de-industrialization, they are doing so of their own free will because they think it has benefits to them.

Now not all Americans want them, but that still doesn't make it ethnic cleansing, any more than me immigrating to the US from Northern Ireland was, or lots of Irish people who moved to England were ethnically cleansing the English in vengeance.

Calling that ethnic cleansing is similarly wrong, and for what it's worth the Wikipedia article on it does not seem to contain the word "cleansing". I googled for the combination of the two terms, and the first two relevant-seeming hits I found are from Quora and some book on Amazon containing wording such as

The Irish were simply to be pushed off to poorer, less desirable parts, in a sort of early version of ethnic cleansing.

and

It was, beyond doubt, ethnic cleansing, but not of the worst kind because the Irish were made to leave rather than killed on spot.

If anyone thinks that it was ethnic cleansing on the basis that the Irish were forced out of the most desirable locations in favour of the Britons (so it was... ethnically cleansing the best parts of Ireland only?), I guess that's fair, but this is a premise that is also not present in the US immigration case - there is no forcing of the current population to relocate to less desirable areas, and in fact the new immigrants tend to cluster in the least desirable ones.

If anyone thinks that it was ethnic cleansing on the basis that the Irish were forced out of the most desirable locations in favour of the Britons (so it was... ethnically cleansing the best parts of Ireland only?)

Most of the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans after the breakup of Yugoslavia was similarly just forced relocations (deaths were in the tens of thousands vs. over a million forcibly relocated).

I guess that's fair, but this is a premise that is also not present in the US immigration case - there is no forcing of the current population to relocate to less desirable areas, and in fact the new immigrants tend to cluster in the least desirable ones.

State-subsidized relocations into areas drive housing prices up and wages down (along with all sorts of other first and second order effects) and the state subsidized part makes it literally impossible for the native population to compete. Coupled with refusals to enforce the law against the new population, and an overbearing willingness to enforce it against the native population if they try to fight against the resettlements, makes it very much done under the threat of violence and actual violence from the state and the migrants.

The stories that are commonly related as evidence of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans all involve mass murder, though (Srebrenica etc.); the usability of Yugoslavia as evidence for natural usage of the term is also further complicated by a fat US foreign policy goal thumb on the scale (compare to how the media would even have evacuation of orphaned children from captured parts of Ukraine by Russia count as genocide).

State-subsidized relocations into areas drive housing prices up and wages down (along with all sorts of other first and second order effects) and the state subsidized part makes it literally impossible for the native population to compete.

What's a concrete example of an area that you believe was ethnically cleansed in this fashion?

Brampton, ON? So far as I can tell, the place seems to be 100% Indian nowadays.

In the adjacent district to my part of London (and I won’t tell you which bit sorry) all the street signs are now in Arabic. I walked through and didn’t see a single white person.

Springfield, OH is one of the more obvious ones. Rotherham in the UK is another. The process is still ongoing in both of those locations though.

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Deliberately working to reduce the White share of the population is called...what exactly? I like my words, what words do you use?

“Replacing” you? It’s a traditional complaint, even.

I guess I wouldn’t mind “supplementing,” either. It’s more accurate.

Foreigners drive down native birth rates. Diversity drives down White birth rates. It is replacement, and it's genocide, and it's ethnic cleansing.

Supplements are not the majority, and if they are, they are no longer supplementing. It's less accurate, but it's more palatable to your sensibilities.

I wouldn't be saying this if it were truly supplemental, and the nation were 85% White, 10% Black, and 5% Supplements. Did you notice that the numbers are far from that? Or are you just ignoring it?

Dandelions aren't supplementing my lawn any more than grass is supplementing my flower beds. And Morning Glory, no matter the location, needs to be uprooted in any civilized state yard.

Foreigners drive down native birth rates. Diversity drives down White birth rates. It is replacement, and it's genocide, and it's ethnic cleansing.

Actually, in the US, white birth rates are highest in three areas- those with high percentages of religious minorities(ex Amish country), deep rural areas, and heavily Hispanic areas.

those with high percentages of religious minorities(ex Amish country), deep rural areas, and heavily Hispanic areas.

Not foreign, few foreigners, and are the Hispanics counted as White? I would bet on it.

Foreigners drive down native birth rates. Diversity drives down White birth rates.

[citation needed]

The lowest birth rates are found in very homogeneous countries such as South Korea and Japan. In spite of all its diversity, the US white (non-hispanic) birth rate is still greater than that of comparatively homogeneous countries like (much richer) Norway or (barely) (much poorer) Hungary. What gives?

"Diluting" seems like a more accurate and value-neutral verb.

The lowest birth rates are found in very homogeneous countries such as South Korea and Japan. In spite of all its diversity, the US white (non-hispanic) birth rate is still greater than that of comparatively homogeneous countries like (much richer) Norway or (barely) (much poorer) Hungary. What gives?

Multiple factors?

Number 1 result when I searched that exact phrase, which references this study.

Now that I've cited it, you'll concede the point, right? Otherwise what is the point of asking for the citation?

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If these people weren't "deficit financed" maybe. But that's not the situation. There is no level playing field here. There is a scheme to undercut the labor market of legacy Americans, so that the company no longer needs to pay a living wage, and the government subsidizes these people to live there.

So you lose your job because these people can be paid less. Your taxes go to paying for them. All your institutions (schools, hospitals, policing) are overrun by them such that the services you can derive from them are greatly diminished. Landlords kick out their tenants because why rent to 1 legacy American family when you can collect welfare checks from 5 third world families.

Yes, they are replacing white Americans. This isn't just a "git gud" or "sucks to suck" argument where Whites have sour grapes about foreigners outcompeting them. The thumb is on the scale so fucking hard it's impossible to survive, except to accept living in third world conditions or leaving.

Or being killed in the ongoing pogrom.

"supplant", possibly. Increase the supply of workers and the mid-to-high iq whites are forced to move to lower crime and higher-pay, yet lower birth-rate cultural and physical zones.

In 20 years we can check back in on these towns that had 50-100% of their existing population in "deficit financed cheap labor" airdropped on them. Assuming the <70 IQ third worlders stay, I'm pretty sure with the crime and destruction of institutions, along with the total deafness the political class has towards the legacy population's suffering, the area will be 75-99% ethnically cleansed.

And yes, words do have meaning. This is every bit an ethnic cleansing as the Jewish Pogroms in Russia, as the Goths or the Huns invading the late Roman Empire and pillaging the provinces (often under a fictitious appellation from the Emperor as the new "protector" of that province, even as they pillaged it and put it's natives to the sword or torch). It's every bit an ethnic cleansing as the "illegal settlements" in Gaza or the West Bank.

There are ways to remove populations from their ancestral ground short of putting them on trains and gassing them. Or putting them on a death march to a reservation. Just because it falls narrowly short of the worst ethnic cleansings in history doesn't mean it's not at least meeting the standard of several others which are widely considered ethnic cleansings.

it's not at least meeting the standard of several others which are widely considered ethnic cleansings.

Name them.

I’ve said before that I don’t like Haitians, if they were dumped in my neighborhood I would call my reps to demand that El transportador moved them somewhere nonspecific. But moving them in is just retarded, not ethnic cleansing.

The Plantation of Ulster

Thank you, that seems to fit.

As an Ulsterman I would say it does not fit, because while that was an ethnic cleansing (in my view) that is because the locals were forcibly removed from their land and forced into the worst areas with significant violence. In Springfield and other areas 30% or so of the population had left prior to any immigration, and weren't forced from their land as happened when my ancestors colonized Ulster. If anything it is the other way round, where they are being put in the undesirable areas, rather than taking the prime land forcibly from Americans.

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moving them in is just retarded, not ethnic cleansing

If the Left would call the same thing an ethnic cleansing if it were anyone but them perpetrating it, I think calling it an ethnic cleansing is justified.

But it’s all just who/whom at this point. The intent is the same in either case; and is ignoring what the people responsible say openly.

They cry and scream about it all the time when China imports Han Chinese into Xianjang to displace the local minorities there. Or when Israel does it in the West Bank.

I, uh, think there’s some other stuff going on in Xinjiang.

Name them

Jesus I thought I did.

This is every bit an ethnic cleansing as the Jewish Pogroms in Russia, as the Goths or the Huns invading the late Roman Empire and pillaging the provinces (often under a fictitious appellation from the Emperor as the new "protector" of that province, even as they pillaged it and put it's natives to the sword or torch). It's every bit an ethnic cleansing as the "illegal settlements" in Gaza or the West Bank.

All of those examples involve people literally getting expelled from their homes and forced to leave. There is basically none of that in the idiotic open borders policy.

White flight? Sure it’s “voluntary” but it’s still coerced expulsion

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Read about the Jewish Pogroms in Russia. There was no program to forcibly expel them. Rather the government plugged up their ears and closed their eyes when a smattering of Jews got assaulted or sometimes murdered, and the Jews self-deported fearing for their lives and sensing which way the wind was blowing.

What is happening to towns across America is absolutely as bad, if not worse, than the Jewish Pogroms in Russia.

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If I actually believed Trump would or could accomplish any of the things he says he will (from calling up Vlad and "ending the war with one phone call" to deporting all the illegal aliens), I would consider voting for him. Since we saw how well he did as President already, I have no reason to think this is the case. (And no, I don't buy "That's because the Deep State was against him but this time he'll know how to fight them.") I think his followers who expect This Time It Will Be Different are being taken for a ride, like last time.

You don't have to believe he'll accomplish them to be able to tell that one person says "mass deportations now" and the other has let it happen.

I'm not holding my breath that we'll get the necessary 10 million foreigners per year deported, but I know which one will move the needle more. Also, just look at the graph. Obama had the uptick, Trump was a reversion to form, and then Biden opened the floodgates. He doesn't have to deliver on much to be better than the worst President of all time, who has enabled the likes of Cuban-born Jew Mayorkas to facilitate an invasion of my homeland, and who thinks an unrelenting stream of immigration is a good thing.

I've said recently there's only one difference in politics today, and that's the issue of migration. We at least have two people on opposite sides of that issue, and I'm voting for the one who is on my side, and hoping for the best.

We haven't even mentioned RFK, or any potential role for him in the administration. The same man who, in an open convention, could very well have been on the top of the ticket today. The man who I would have been voting for, maintaining my third-party voting streak, if he had not endorsed Trump.

"ending the war with one phone call"

Amusingly, this is pretty much the one thing that I think could happen (which is not a claim that it will). We frequently reference a left/right divide on "violence as a continuum/switch", and the piecemeal "escalation" we've seen from the Biden administration is very much on the continuum side and pretty clearly doesn't really scare totalitarian despots. Viewing it as a switch, and then credibly threatening to throw the switch if necessary seems like it would be more convincing: "Come to the negotiating table and accept my minimal terms, or I pull out the Gulf War playbook and destroy all your remaining Soviet stockpile. Tanks are already staging in Poland."

Is there a danger of nuclear war there? Maybe. But if you let that spectre drive all your decisionmaking, you'll find yourself cosplaying Neville Chamberlain in pursuit of "peace" all the way to a world war. I don't like war. It's terrible. Always has been. Always will be. But eternally shying away from it has its costs too.

The problem is that the United States and NATO armies are in shambles already, and wouldn’t be able to credibly threaten that kind of conventional war. Hell, I doubt the US has the ability to do a 2003-style thunder run against a country like Iraq anymore. Ashton Carter absolutely gutted the military under his watch. He got high on Francis Fukuyama and assumed that the United States was the one remaining superpower and would only be doing goat herder wars for the next fifty years. So he got rid of all the programs that would allow the United States to fight conflicts against peers and went all in on COIN stuff. A NATO expeditionary force in Europe would have enough shells to last for about three days. And modern air defenses are outpacing offensive air capabilities, so the Air Force probably wouldn’t be able to get level of air superiority that NATO combat methods require. Which would mean Ukraine war style meat wave offensives with insufficient artillery support. How are the American people going to react to taking 19,000 casualties in two weeks? Because that’s what the the Army War College is estimating. How is the army going to replace one fifth of it’s combat troops in that time frame? What happens when China and North Korea take the opportunity to go for it the second America is tied down elsewhere?

NATO is even worse. Poland ran the numbers, and their war games estimate that the nation would last about 48 hours in the event of a war with Russia, which is why their bellicose rhetoric suddenly got real quite about a year ago. Britain would have serious problems getting even a single combat deployable division ready, and that would probably take months.

Which candidate is mostly like to effect the end result of deporting aliens? The one who talks about how terrible mass migration is, or the child-of-immigrants who celebrates indigenous peoples’ day by talking about how America was founded on genocide?

If you genuinely care about effecting an end to illegal migration, then there’s an obligation to vote for whoever moves the needle on effecting that change. Trump didn’t succeed in building a border wall but he did smash the borders of acceptable speech on illegal migration.

As long as birthright citizenship exists illegal immigration will continue without clear end. Since there is no viable plan to end birthright citizenship none of this really matters at all.

The viable plan to ending birthright citizenship is to reexamine the legal definition of natural born citizen in light of earlier British jurisprudence which, in some cases, mentiins that the father must also be a natural born citizen. This is the kind of originalist legal argumentation that we find among Heritage Foundation guys and their SC picks.

We can do that, and then we can just restrict how many people can come in. Do a pregnancy test on women who come in. Lots of simple stuff. This issue is a failure of political will, not political thought.

The viable plan to ending birthright citizenship is to reexamine the legal definition of natural born citizen in light of earlier British jurisprudence which

There's no need to have motivated semantic arguments about what is a "natural birth" and what isn't (what about those born via Cesarean section??) because it's totally irrelevant to the constitutional language. The fourteenth amendment is extremely clear and unambiguous:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

How many members of the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court do you believe would vote categorically against birthright citizenship?

If they can be persuaded that what the founders intended precluded the children of non citizen fathers, then maybe all of them, why not?

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birthrate citizenship

Is that like, whoever raises the birthrate the most gets to become a citizen? That’s certainly one plan for dealing with the problem.

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I don't have an obligation to be a single-issue voter, nor do I have an obligation to vote for anyone.

Why would you consider voting for him if he 100% ended illegal immigration, but not if he merely increased the chance of ending it? This applies to your other issue (ending war in Ukraine).

This is uncharitable, boo-outgroup Trump-sneering thinly disguised as "both sides suck" complaining. You should be ashamed of this comment and go vent your spleen some other place rather than bringing down the level of discourse here, especially given that you are a mod.

Uncharitable I'll give you (I said as much) but if you feel I booed Trump very slightly more than I booed Kamala, well, too bad. Sometimes both sides really do suck.

I am not ashamed of this comment, merely disgruntled that I am unable to achieve perfect indifference to outcomes. I would not mod it if it came from someone else. We are obligated to be even handed and civil, not pretend to be objective on all political matters.

I'm in a pretty similar boat of "how much worse can our political candidates get (vivek and warren poke their heads out)", and I'll applaud putting any words on that marker. I think from a conservative dimension it gets frustrating that people tend to stop at her 'just' being a liar and a fool, without mention of the many many many other ways that Harris is also a mirror to Trump's other failings than being a liar or a moron, but it's not an election that's left me happy.

For all my general support of Trump as a non-citizen, I will admit that he is more of a fireship and a reactionary than a purely positive political candidate.

I’m curious why you think Trump would damage American standing compared to Harris? Strikes me more that Trump would reduce American standing against fashionable Euros but fashionable euros aren’t the world

The idea of “Trump damaging our standing globally” to me is always 100% tied up into class anxiety amongst the PMC.

Trump is popular, and not just in the USA. He has rapport with and the respect of many world leaders and their respective publics; just not the ones that the cosmopolitan upper PMC consider their “equals”.

I see this very plainly. So many blue tribers of this type simply can’t be seen, even to themselves, to be “one of those people”. They’ll complain about the “excesses” of the Democratic Party until they’re blue in the face but are basically never going to actually do anything to push back against it.

The chapo types, rarely right about anything (pun intended), were 100% right about the libs.

Ya know, people like to mock "fashionable Euros" like our relationship with NATO and European trading partners is a fake Gay EuroVision contest, but Europe (and the Commonwealth) is actually still pretty damned important - more important (at least to us) than the rest of the world, I would argue. I do not think Putin actually respects Trump and I think Trump is too susceptible to flattery. Do we think China, and our Japanese and Korean allies, respect Trump more?

Africa and MENA might or might not like Trump more (Harris they will probably see, correctly, as an easy mark for more American largesse). I guess you could say that Iran and the Arabs and North Korea are more afraid of just how crazy Trump might be. It's somewhat of a toss-up but on the international front I think Harris is very marginally better for us. I think world leaders will mostly roll their eyes behind her back but carry on business. Trump throwing a monkey wrench into everything may be a feature and not a bug to his supporters, but I don't think that actually helps us. All his promises about tariffs evening the playing field and "making NATO pay its fair share" are going to be either empty, or disastrous, and "make them believe you are crazy enough to start a war" is not, IMO, actually a good strategy for preventing wars.

I guess you could say that Iran and the Arabs and North Korea are more afraid of just how crazy Trump might be.

I think this is a narrow perspective on the effect Trump has on the Iranians and their proxies (which is what I assume you meant by Arabs, as most other Arab states are at least nominally allied with the US). He's a more effective deterrent not simply because they think he's crazy, but to a large extent because they know he's not likely to try to restrain Israel in their response to Iranian aggression the same way the Democrats do/will.

This IMO is one of the best reasons to vote for Trump (and I say that as a non-Trump voter) - not because I think the humanitarian concerns raised by Democrats are meaningless, but because I think the ME is dramatically less likely to go nuclear if Iran feels less empowered to constantly be belligerent.

Trump got along just fine with Theresa May, as I recall. But in general, the Euros will be happy with any Democrat and dislike any Republican, regardless of anything; this is a group which includes those gave Obama a Nobel Peace Prize for not being George Bush.

Ya know, people like to mock "fashionable Euros" like our relationship with NATO and European trading partners is a fake Gay EuroVision contest, but Europe (and the Commonwealth) is actually still pretty damned important - more important (at least to us) than the rest of the world, I would argue.

But you didn't argue that. You didn't even claim that. Your argument was scoped to 'the world,' not 'the pretty damned important (at least to us) Europeans.'

That is a common eurocentric tendency, and eurocentricism is as defensible a geopolitical bias as any other, but while Europe may be a peninsula was an ego problem, it is certainly not the world. It's not even the most important part of the world to the US- and that's a point of US bipartisan consensus for nearly the last 25 years.

This is without touching on whether the Europeans should be 'more important' is a prescriptive argument, not a descriptive argument, and one where a lot of lobbying occurs precisely to shape your perception in that direction. You later arguments in this very post reflect the narrative priorities of non-American states whose objections are grounded in zero-sum interest differences (such as how the relative tariff advantages should be between the European Union negotiating block and the US economy, and whether European non-investment in defense spending should shape American security commitments to the Europeans).

I do not think Putin actually respects Trump and I think Trump is too susceptible to flattery. Do we think China, and our Japanese and Korean allies, respect Trump more?

Sure. Why not- it's not like they have any particular respect for Harris (whose start as a girlfriend of a connected politician is not exactly secret), or Biden (probably the most credible madman-theory nuclear leader in a generation), or even Obama (whose own susceptibility to flattery was well known and for whom the derogatory comics abroad would generally not be printed in any reputable American media).

But it's also irrelevant on two fronts.

First, as a matter of argument, because you've shifted your goal posts to 'respect Trump' from 'America's standing.' This is a fine motte to retreat to, but it's still an abandonment of the bailey.

Second, America's standing on the global stage doesn't derive from personal respect for the President of the United States as a person. It derives from the fact that the Americans have a lot of money, a lot of military logistical power, and a government able (and willing) to use them. The opposition to Trump in many cases does more to harm American standing than Trump himself, because it gets in the way of what the US government could do for them in any quid-pro-quo.

Africa and MENA might or might not like Trump more (Harris they will probably see, correctly, as an easy mark for more American largesse). I guess you could say that Iran and the Arabs and North Korea are more afraid of just how crazy Trump might be. It's somewhat of a toss-up but on the international front I think Harris is very marginally better for us. I think world leaders will mostly roll their eyes behind her back but carry on business. Trump throwing a monkey wrench into everything may be a feature and not a bug to his supporters, but I don't think that actually helps us. All his promises about tariffs evening the playing field and "making NATO pay its fair share" are going to be either empty, or disastrous, and "make them believe you are crazy enough to start a war" is not, IMO, actually a good strategy for preventing wars.

Is your opinion on global politics or good strategy well informed enough to be worth valuing?

You've given a lot of tropes here, but please believe me when I say that not going through them line by line is a courtesy to forum standards. Suffice to say, it's a classic ethnocentric American perspective with many of the classic American tells (poor latin america, unworthy of American attention as ever), and lacking any significant demonstration of awareness of how American presidents actually impact other country's politics. In so much that it reflects a foreign perspective, it's an obviously European-based foreign perspective... which is to say, one of the most compromised by American political feedback loops in the world, which frequently blends American and European ethnocentric narratives, and a dynamic completely non-generalizable to the world as a whole.

While European-American political overlap (and contamnination, if one prefers) is certainly a valid topic of discussion, it's not a particularly relevant one to the world that doesn't share major American-centric media constellations or have as active an effort of purposely shaping and influencing American political-elite opinions through major media organization relationships.

First, as a matter of argument, because you've shifted your goal posts to 'respect Trump' from 'America's standing.' This is a fine motte to retreat to, but it's still an abandonment of the bailey.

Obviously the president is not the nation, but I think the regard with which other world leaders hold the POTUS reflects the regard they hold America (and specifically, America's likelihood to take action in its best interests). I'm not sure what your grievance here is; you share the silly belief that I'm concerned whether State Department officials will be welcomed at European wine and cheese parties, or you think I dramatically underestimate how well Trump can play other world leaders and not be played by them? (I have already said I think Harris will absolutely be played by them.)

Is your opinion on global politics or good strategy well informed enough to be worth valuing?

I think very few people here have opinions worth valuing. I didn't ask you to value mine. (I do value yours on global politics and strategy, fwiw.) I confess I am not sure what exactly you think I am wrong about, other than apparently not having a high enough opinion of Trump, and overestimating Europe's importance? I am willing to be persuaded on the latter point (and maybe on the former, but you haven't really tried).

Obviously the president is not the nation, but I think the regard with which other world leaders hold the POTUS reflects the regard they hold America (and specifically, America's likelihood to take action in its best interests).

I dispute that the regard other world leaders hold the POTUS reflects American standing, and think you are falling victim to the classic conflation of being popular with being influential while tethering yourself to a stunted view of who the audience that matters is.

In diplomatic contexts, a classic basis of leveraging/manipulating people is to go after those whose self-image is centered on being perceived well. If specific person(s) can convince you that your reputation depends on their approval, you will not only prioritize their interests over your own (because you will rationalize that their good opinion is your interest), but also their views over the views of other observers. Because 'they' are/should be the more important partner, 'their' opinion matters more, and 'they' can speak for the rest of the partner-population because they are more important.

Which is how you get the Europeans/Americans conflating 'Europe/America' and 'the west' and 'the world' depending on whose gravitas they want to speak with.

The issue being, of course, that the interlocuter whose good opinion you want does not represent more than themselves, and their interests are not your own, and when you start changing yourself for their regard you are giving them power over you to the detriment of not only yourself, but your own power base.

In the domestic American political context, this dynamic is analogous to the (now former) Republican elites who were more interested in Democratic-aligned media respectability than in the issues Republican voters cared about. Republican party elites who were concerned about respectability politics routinely made observable concessions on party base priorities while seeking accolades from respectable media. They did so despite even though increasing majorities of those interlocuters sympathized with, were members of, or actively cooperated with the Democratic party against the Republican party positions.

This parallel's implications should not be subtle, because they are not unique.

I'm not sure what your grievance here is; you share the silly belief that I'm concerned whether State Department officials will be welcomed at European wine and cheese parties, or you think I dramatically underestimate how well Trump can play other world leaders and not be played by them? (I have already said I think Harris will absolutely be played by them.)

My 'grievance' is that you are raising a concern of a situation you were already happy with. You've already had a president who was played and flattered to- that was Barrack Obama.

In a geopolitical sense, Obama was an exceptionally vain president whose primary theme was wanting to be seen as historic and symbolic and appreciated for his ideas, and Obama's focus-zones-of-choice were those that played to glowing coverage. As Obama was more or less a Eurocentric Atlanticist by instinct, and the Europeans were very happy to flatter that, that's where he spent most of his time (and where he spent a good part of his initial retirement). In areas far more removed from American political sensibilities and where the coverage was less consistently glowing- such as Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and most of Asia- Obama was far more distant after the initial honey moon and usual requirements.

This might be fine if Obama's popularity in Europe actually translated into major policy wins in Europe, in using increased popularity to shift the Europeans in more advantageous ways, but not only did this not happen, but Obama was instead lobbied into European-favored paths to American and even his own detriment.

Not only were longstanding American grievances not resolved by the EUropeans (NATO underinvestment, growing Russian gas-dependency, increasing Chinese network/infrastructure access, asymmetric protectionism by the Europeans), but the Europeans alternatively were able to lobby the Obama administration into, among other things,

-The Russian Reset (part of the German-preference for prioritizing Russian economic engagements over more pro-US eastern european partner security concerns; the aftermath of this helped lead to the Democratic over-compensation and russia-gate scandals)

-Brexit campaign lobbying (which was not only likely detrimental to the intended effect, but cultivated a higher level of partisan-driven political influence efforts)

-The Libya intervention (which was European grudge match against a former cold war foe who actually acceded to major US demands in the previous decade)

-The Syria Red Line debacle (a product, and then consequence, of Franco-British intervention partnership)

-The Iran Deal (a Congressionally-unpassable arrangement which offered major economic opportunities for the Europeans)

-The Paris Climate Accords (another Congressionally-unpassable arrangement which furthered anticipated EU-protection policies but which contributed to American political polarization due to its adoption into EPA regulation and following court cases)

These are not things that are in and of themselves 'bad' or indefensible in why they were approached, but rather indicative of high-profile ways in which the Europeans were able to assert more influence on how the US approached certain issues than vice versa, in ways more clearly beneficial to European than American-consensus interests (not least because many were beyond any American consensus but hoping to create new fait accompli).

Sometimes this is fine, quid-pro-quos are often one-sided in isolation, but the failure-state of pursuing regard (which Obama got quite a bit of for agreeing with what the Europeans wanted) and falling to flattery (clearly the Europeans were quite convinced by Obama's high-intelligence rationales).

To return to the grievance- your complaint, even when shadowed in both-sidisms, has already come to pass. The most recent well-regarded president is a president who was so routinely flattered for his wit and charisma that it generally isn't even recognized as flattery. This has already happened. It was not an objection at the time. It is not a credible objection now.

I think very few people here have opinions worth valuing. I didn't ask you to value mine.

I did not claim you did. I will now ask why you made an argument based off of your opinion, if you don't think it's well informed enough to be worth valuing.

It's the same sort of self-negation that accompanies several of your criticisms and predictions. 'Everything Trump does will be terrible and fail, unless it succeeds in which case it was/will be worthless.' 'My opinion is strong and argued at length, but I won't claim it has worth worth defending.'

Well, which is it- is your opinion strong, worthless, or both?

I am poking you in the eye on this because part of the derangement in TDS comes from the totalizing mix of simultaneously asserting 'worst thing ever' and accompanying 'can't possibly be good' when worst thing ever doesn't occur. Not only is this contradictory in its own right, but it's a form of patronizing dismissal of the opinions of others by dismissing the relevance of the not-failures others may value as successes... which goes to part of why Trump is simultaneously successful and so triggering to PMC types with TDS, because Trump champions issues that are/were dismissed as unimportant, and disregards things claimed to be important.

Hence the blunt challenge on if you think your opinion on Trump foreign affairs is worth valuing. If you do, it's fine to say so and we can go into challenging that basis- but if you don't, but you are making strong claims anyway, that is itself unsound / not logical / the D in TDS.

I confess I am not sure what exactly you think I am wrong about, other than apparently not having a high enough opinion of Trump, and overestimating Europe's importance? I am willing to be persuaded on the latter point (and maybe on the former, but you haven't really tried).

And I shall probably not, since I just lost a bloody lot of effort trying to put together an effort response, including a post on issues with your previous post. That was lost for good, but here is try two for your question on overestimating Europe's importance.

/// Trump's Effectiveness Abroad ///

On Trump's effectiveness abroad, the short version is that unless you have a second language skill I'm not aware of, your impression of how effective Trump was and how he was perceived is shaped by the Atlanticist-dominated media coverage of international relations, i.e. Western European and State Department liberal types (many of whom are reading western european media company coverage) who are the prime targets of TDS. This is not an unbiased or objective audience. Outside of Europe, Trump's reception was 'normal.' Lower general opinion than Obama, who was and cultivated a rockstar popularity, but Obama was also rarely willing to press issues at the cost of his popularity.

Trump acceptance in turn followed from that he was generally willing to let partners focus on what they wanted without 'usual' levels of US interference (read: Trump was willing to buck the local ambassador and not make issues of things the local embassy might ask for government pressure on), as long as he got some signature concession. Mexico got substantial lack of pushback on its internal reform priorities (including rolling back the Mexican oil industry liberalization) after it supported NAFTA renegotiation and did Remain in Mexico, Japan got to play a leading role in the Quad and facilitation in Philippine influence and access after its own trade agreement, Korea got to pursue sunshine policy 2.0 with American facilitation (including the Trump-KJU summit, which was a South Korean success that tends to get ignored), and the Israeli-Arab normalization had a bunch of different angles of who got what for what.

When you (sarcastically) claim you are accused of not having a high enough opinion of Trump, this is true, but not because you should have a high opinion of him. Trump's effectiveness abroad was quote / unquote 'normal.' It was not terrible, it was within historical norms. Trump was a transactional president who did far less to meddle in some places than other presidents have in the past, and while that may seem a low bar to clear that is a still a bar many American presidents failed at.

/// The Europe Exception ///

The only place Trump was particularly 'bad' at was Europe, which is also by design the part of the world with the most reverse media influence back to the US (because when your national security for 50 years depends on American opinion, you invest in shaping American opinion).

There's plenty to be said about the extension of US politics into European political thought (such as how BLM protests of the Obama administration were echoed in European countries without the issues), and how the Obama administration tried to subvert Trump (at the same time the Obama administration was locking in the Russia-gate narrative domestically, Obama in his farewells to Merkel more or less encouraged her to consider herself the leader of the free world- imagine what your perspective is if the American president says 'don't trust my successor' even as American intelligence leaks are insinuating a Russian stooge), but the crux of the policy differences between Trump and Europe was the already emerging breakdown of the strategic logic of the cold war-originated alliance.

During the Cold War, the US granted European countries systemic economic advantages vis-a-vis US industry in exchange for strategic deference. Sometimes this was for things like the Marshal Plan, but it was also done to help other parts of the US alliance, such as trading concessions to American markets for letting Korea get access to European markets. The EU, when it was forming in its current form in the late 1990s/early 200s, inherited many of these concessions, even as EU collective bargaining had an often explicit purpose of improving European negotiating positions against the US.

This was because European and American competition is an explicit policy consideration of the relationship. Again, the stated purpose of the EU common market is to get better deals (for Europe) at the expense of others (the US). A united European polity was considered a way for the Europeans to compete with the US in the post-cold war, and there's no shortage of international relations scholarship about how European rule-making would restrain and shape others (including the US) to European benefit. European centralization and unification has been a common idea and explicit goal of many relevant European elites involved in EU politics. However, during the post-9-11 Iraq War, the Bush Administration broke the back on European solidarity when the Franco-German attempt at a pan-European objection to the Iraq War (in part because of their particular bilateral interests in Iraq) was undercut by the UK and coalition of the willing who supported the US invasion of Iraq. While this broke the attempt at a European common position, you will also note that this effort was breaking the core logic of the alliance- an inherited economic incentive for Europe, but not a deferential strategic asset for the Americans.

This was the start of the 'modern' call for European strategic autonomy from the US- the notion that an autonomous Europe is needed to not get into American wars 'it' didn't want to get involved with. Given that the coalition of the willing and American coalitions in general are voluntary, the primary way to advance European strategic autonomy and not get involved in an American conflict was to... not spend more on NATO, which would bring into conflict with Russia, at a time that the Franco-German consensus was that Russia was a critical economic partner and also a counter-balance to American influence in Europe (and also extending that peace dividend could help prop up the post-financial crisis challenges to the governments).

The Trump-Europe issue, for all its messiness and propaganda, basically revolves around the context that a critical mass of the European elites wanted the benefits of an inherited economic-concessions-for-military-deference bargain, except to cut out the military or deference requirement and disagreement of who the threat actually was.

If this doesn't seem unreasonable, consider why typically states pay mercenaries, and not the other way around.

Put another way- in so much that trade concessions are a form of payment for future services, the Americans are not the mercenary in the US-Euro security relationship: the Europeans are.

/// How Much Would You Pay For European Allies? ///

The strategic value issue, in turn- the 'why is Europe important to the US'- is that Europe simply can't offer much value as a military asset, even if it wanted to.

Europe is a critical enabler for the US to fight against Russia, but the primary reason (besides morality) to fight Russia is if you are allied with the Europeans who Russia's revanchism threatens. There are separate issues of what Russia would do to prolong conflict with the US for ideological/revanchist/other mockable reasons if the US did pull out of Europe, but fundamentally there is no need to fight the Russians over Europe if you don't consider Europe worth fighting for. Europe helping the US ability to fight Russia is an advantage for the Europeans, not the Americans, and in so much that there is a cost saving here, it is enjoyed by the Europeans, not the US, who would be avoiding far greater costs by simply not being obliged to fight.

The challenger the Americans care about, on the other hand, is China. This is one of the few bipartisan consensus points for the US over the last 25 years. Russia can break itself and half of Europe apart, and the US would be fine. China is the only power with the mass and industrial capacity and- critically- naval potential to threaten not only the American ability to go where it chooses, but to reach back to the US.

The things is, all the reasons that applied to the Europeans not wanting to align with Trump against Russia apply even more so to China. China is not a military threat to Europe per see. Unlike Russia, there are not territorial conflicts or near-term revanchism. China is a major potential market (that Germany is hooked on), China is a major potential investor (that post-financial crisis Europe is struggling to find sources of). China is a very clear advocate for a multipolar world order, and while China would prefer to be the biggest pole it's also not exactly going to be competing for Europe, so a Chinese multipolar order has overlap with a European multipolar order.

When the Europeans say they don't want to get roped into an American conflict, the American conflict they're thinking of is typically going to be the US-China conflict.

And here the value of the Europeans as military allies is dismal. Not only has NATO underinvestment crippled European military in general, but the Europeans haven't had the right kind of capabilities. A US-China war is functionally a naval war, and the European armies undercut by decades of underinvestment are far easier to fix than navies with the same restraints. There's a reason when there's talk of European Indo-Pacific power, they are talking about small islands on the wrong sides of the Pacific.

Now, this doesn't mean that the Europeans can't contribute anything to the US in a china conflict. However, the most valuable things the Europeans bring to the table is not their military support, but other things. Like... money and trade flows.

Which is the conflict that the US and Europeans have over NATO costs. And trade relations. And which the Europeans with significant China exposure threaten to lose quite a bit of if they side with the US over China in a US-China conflict. And which competes with the strategic logic of who is paying who for their geopolitical support.

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I've felt this way since 2012, at least. But that's more a reflection of my age than anything.

I am also now convinced that the 1 year+ campaigning season is mostly unneeded, to boot.

Sure looks like we could do things on a truncated timeline.. Start 'election season' in June of the election year. All candidates have about a month to campaign as hard as they can, hold a couple debates in there. Put ALL primaries on the same day in July. Winning candidate has a few weeks to pick a VP. Then, starting August, the winning candidates can make their case for election in earnest for 3 months, which is ample time to get to know them.

So much more efficient, and in the modern era of information technology, I don't think we're losing any value to the average voter.

Sometimes I wish I could vote in American elections, for how much they shape the world, and how significant they are even for us.

I don't wish that for this one.

If I had to, I would feel genuinely awful and miserable voting for either of those candidates. As it is, I'm going to watch from the other side of the ocean and hope that whoever gets elected doesn't screw everything up too much. It's a bad time to be American; it's a bad time to be an American client state.

The degree to and way in which they shape the world is also mediated by your own country's government. You could vote for a government that would show transatlanticists the door, which would significantly reduce American influence over your life, or for one that is willing to play hardball with them and extract concessions rather than being completely deferential, which may give you more influence over American governance than a vote in the US would (especially if you live in a small but important country with a more representative political system).

To some extent, I agree with you, and I’m frustrated by my government’s tendency to roll over the moment that America clicks its fingers. The less American values us, the more desperately we throw away any possible basis for independent foreign policy in an attempt to please it. (Granted the alternatives are the EU / Russia / China none of which are great choices, but we should play the field a lot more than we do).

But still, if you come home and find a bear in your apartment, whether you play hardball with the bear or feed it all your biscuits, your life is now going to revolve around the bear.

Transpacificist, in my case. I'm writing from Australia.

We do have some options in the relationship with America, but the most America-critical voices in our domestic politics tend to be pro-China, and whatever bad things I may say about America, I much prefer the United States as an ally to China.

I think you're spot on here, with the one caveat that this pattern matches a lot of stuff that people say about every election.

So when the Republicans put forward someone like J.D. Vance or Ron Desantis in the next election, I expect to hear the same howling in the media. But I'll be disappointed if I hear it coming from people who should know better.

To a degree, this is true (I remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth and "America is Dead" from my liberal friends when Bush was reelected in 2004 -- and even then I was a heterodox centrist who got hate for not thinking Bush was Literally Hitler), but I genuinely do think it has become worse in my lifetime, and we're at a local minimum if not a historical one now.

The phrases "Worse than Trump" and "Like Trump but worse" are going to be VERY common in 2028. And you will disappointed.

And it's entirely the fault of both parties for putting us here. The Republicans, for letting MAGA cultists take over the party and drive all serious grown-ups out, and the Democrats, for letting bad faith woke identity politics take over everything. And both of them, for turning us into a gerontocracy that very effectively shuts younger candidates out before they can even sniff a primary.

You should save some hatred for the "serious grown-ups" of the Republican party, who were both unable to defeat Democrats and also unable to maintain the respectability of the Republican party, leaving Trump's "fuck respectability" minimax strategy the only way to keep the party viable at all.

Sure, I hate them too. All of them. I blame your Republicans more for where we are now, but I've got plenty of hate to go around.

Considering who owns the most megaphones and controls their content, I find this opinion absolutely astounding.

I have a memory that goes back more than one election cycle.

That makes it worse. A longer time span gives more evidence to come to the opposite conclusion, not less.

It is interesting to me that Trump's odds of winning the election are at 60% on Manifold (1), and Harris's are at 47% (2). How does this work and does it indicate insufficient liquidity?

(1) https://manifold.markets/ManifoldPolitics/will-trump-win-the-2024-election

(2) https://manifold.markets/ManifoldPolitics/if-joe-biden-drops-out-and-endorses

How does this work and does it indicate insufficient liquidity?

It's not a real market since it doesn't involve real money. People can make vanity bets on Harris at over 10% higher than their odds in a true market (Polymarket). The liquidity is also bad.

Just use Polymarket, which has had billions in real money bets and small spreads of around 0.1%.

You're looking at the real vs play money market. Trump has 60% on sweepcash but only 52% on the play money market. The real money market tracks the other real money markets because people do arbitrage, but the play money market is only partially correlated, either because people believe the real money markts are being manipulated (by the crypto investor or by people hedging bets on other classes of market), or because people who want to bet in the real money market bet against their intended position in an attempt to manipulate their entry price lower.

Sounds like a potential for some arbitrage. If my understanding of it is right, someone could buy 100 shares in Harris to lose (M53) and 100 shares in Trump to lose (M40) for a total of M93. Then win M100 regardless of which candidate wins.

When I originally wrote that comment I used dollars, before realising that Manifold doesn't use actual money. My guess is that this explains the discrepancy. Nobody really cares about arbitrage if the only prize is pretend internet points.

Around midnight, his odds briefly dipped under 60%. Was it manipulation? I don't think so.

There are certainly problems with treating betting markets as truly predictive, but I think claims that they're manipulated are kind of weird. The great thing about betting markets is that if someone tries to move the market for the sake of trying to push an agenda, someone else that thinks their view is wrong can simply bet back in the opposite direction. There isn't really any good reason to expect manipulation to be stable - if there is a positive EV option available in a tolerably liquid market, someone will take it. The people that insist that Polymarket isn't reflecting the true odds should go make themselves some money!

I think someone did try to manipulate Polymarket in Harris's favor last weekend. But as you point out, people can simply bet in the opposite direction, which they did.

My guess is that it was a Democratic megadonor who bought the story of pro-Trump manipulation (which didn't happen), then tried it for themselves, lost a bunch of money, and quickly bailed.

The flash crash only lasted for about one hour.

Has Mark Cuban written all over it

I don't think it's so much that betting markets are manipulated as it is that they can be representative of the biased of the bettors. I remember mediocre Steelers seasons where the team wasn't playing well, yet they always seemed to be favored by a few points, regardless of the opponent. Why? Because there were certain people who just bet on the Steelers all the time. I don't know who is actually betting on elections but I'd be surprised if any of the following are doing it in significant numbers: Women, minorities, older voters, people without college education, people in rural areas, low-income voters, blue collar voters, etc. Sports betting certainly has its own demographic biases as well, but they track pretty closely to the population that follows sports. The younger, white, male, urban, college-educated population doesn't track well with the segment of the population that follows politics, insofar as the bulk of the people actually participating in the election don't fall into that demographic group. the whole "wisdom of crowds" argument doesn't apply as much.

Yes, exactly, this is what I meant when I said that there are problems with treating betting markets as truly predictive. In sports, these are referred to as "public teams" and I wouldn't be surprised to see these sorts of effects among people that place a few bucks on Polymarket as a hobby. My objection isn't that betting markets are perfect, it's that conscious manipulation will tend to lose out to people that want to make a buck because it creates perceived positive expected value opportunities. People that think there is conscious manipulation or that they personally know which direction the market is biased in should simply bet against that position and enjoy the free positive expected value.

So when the same markets had Trump in the mid 40s to win…does your explanation still hold?

Yup. I put very little value in prediction markets.

Interestingly, his chances of winning the popular vote have crept up to about 40%.

That is as unexpected prediction as they can get. I do read that she is bleeding blue collar and men at brutal rate. And Obama's scolding of black men is definitely not helping her massively. But still ... let's see next few days. It may be that we are just seeing a polls at her lower margin for one reason or another.

Unexpected? Numerous polls have shown Trump recently +2 or +3. 40% chance seems about right. Not the favorite but far from unexpected.

So... did it land? No I don't think so.

I've seen people argue that this isn't about trying to sway the voters, but laying the groundwork for after the election. For example, from a commenter over at Instapundit:

Trump will be arrested if he wins. The DNC and Deep State will not allow him to take office. They're laying the groundwork for public discourse now and are planning it internally. Harris would not be allowed to call him a fascist, and all the rhetoric from retired generals and "experts" all over the air waves.

I've seen similar arguments elsewhere. As a YouTube commenter once put it, Weimar Germany made the mistake of letting Hitler and the Nazis into the government just because they won elections, and we must never repeat that mistake ("Never again!"). This proves Trump wants to be Hitler — this time, for realsies, trust us! — and so, to defend Our Democracy and countless millions of American lives, we must stop him from returning to the White House, no matter what it takes.

The rules, the Constitution, prohibit this? It's time to get Schmittian — "sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception" — and "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." In this "state of exception," the 'rules' take a backseat to the very survival of our nation against Hitler 2.0. (And besides, the written Constitution hasn't described how our government is actually constituted and functions for at least a century — it's a dead letter.)

Of course, my primary theory is that all of this is for show, and "the fix is in," as they say. Get ready for eight years of Harris. To give some quotes from one of my favorite commenters (one "L") over at the Dread Jim's blog:

So, you rightoids ready to sit in the corner and watch while elite human capital takes home another election?

…

You have crucial states openly announcing that they won’t be reporting counts until several days afterwards and you honestly think you stand a chance? I knew rightoids were low IQ but even I’m surprised by ignorance of that level.

…

Again, doesn’t matter if they exclusively counted votes while utterly shitfaced. You have no institutional means to stop them saying the total is whatever we want and no ability to use force. You’re done, simple as.

And my favorite in the thread:

It literally would not matter if there wasn’t a single genuine voter for Kamala in any of those states. The vote is whatever the people counting the vote say it is. Guess who those people are?

By the way, there’s not a single mechanism or institution that would ever support any kind of challenge to the results. Musk can say whatever he wants, in the short time he has before prison, and it doesn’t mean anything.

Edit: another proposed theory I'm seeing — this isn't about persuading voters, this is dogwhistling for the crazies to get the job done this time. From another Jim commenter:

Surrounded by a crowd of mystery meats, roasties, some pale cucklords who look vegan, and one hoary and hoarse Obongo, she once again attempts to meme Trump into being Hitler (who himself endured lots of assassination attempts, as many people remember), and pretty much begs — she might as well go down on her knees, as she is used to — everyone to just kill that cracker. There’s very little nuance here. It’s open season from now on until Order is Restored.

Maybe you shouldn’t get your news from the Dreaded Jim?

I’d take the other end of those bets at favorable odds. Slight chance of Trump doing time, I guess, but it’s not like we’d ever agree on whether it was deserved.

Would you mind giving me confidence levels on your predictions of:

  1. Trump won't be declared the winner;
  2. If Trump is declared the winner, he'll not take office;
  3. If Harris takes office, Elon Musk will be arrested in the next year?

Prediction market links:

  • Trump disqualified after being elected (5%)
  • Elon arrested, some very schizo results on this one. Apparently half his expected probability of arrest is between 2026 and 2030? This market looks to be trading on a "well it has to happen SOME time" theory. Honestly, I think these are bizarrely high - it kind of makes me want to open an account.

First one seems pretty unlikely*; what's the lizardman's constant for Manifold?

The second one... well, the obvious motivation for somebody (not necessarily the USA) to arrest him would be "to get enough leverage on him to get him to sell/give Twitter to someone more pliable" (this being akin to rubber-hose cryptanalysis or the Pierre-sur-Haute fiasco, and lawfare without custody being insufficient to the task due to his fuck-you money), although that would be such a huge heel move that I couldn't even begin to guess at the repercussions.

*The problem is that to resolve positive, the SCOTUS has to rule him disqualified, and that means they have to pack the court in less than three months (because this SCOTUS won't do that unless he commits obvious treason, which he has no reason to do as President-elect, and if Trump takes office the court can't be packed against him).

For Twitter? Not his immensely valuable, industry leading industrial and tech companies? The one that isn't making any money, that's hemorrhaging users, that runs off advertising that's in steep decline?

  1. Elon Musk doesn't actually own a majority stake in Tesla.
  2. My understanding is that Tesla and SpaceX owe a significant chunk of their value to Elon Musk's leadership, which means one can't just steal them out from under him without causing much of that value to disintegrate.
  3. As @Corvos noted, at the governmental scale money is less relevant than power, and there's power in Twitter (which is, of course, why Musk bought it in the first place). There is particularly power in Twitter to make or break a full set of the big platforms for censorship purposes - in other words, if one supports or opposes SJ (though in the latter case, one presumably would be cheering Musk; as Zvi put it, "Musk spent $44 billion dollars so the rest of us didn’t have to. That’s pretty sweet").

The one that isn't making any money, that's hemorrhaging users, that runs off advertising that's in steep decline?

And this is different that the situation all legacy media finds itself in... how, exactly?

Twitter is the Voice of America. Owning it is a big deal, because "allowed to run C&C servers for your human botnets" is what the First Amendment is designed to let you do, just like how the Second is there to make sure you always have the ability to kill your fellow citizens, the Fourth is so that your fellow citizens' ability to discover and prosecute crimes against them is severely curtailed, the Fifth is so that even if they don't find shit they can't torture you into confessing, etc.

Elon Musk has the Voice of America, a fleet of privately-owned ICBMs (and the only company with the ability to produce them these days), and the infrastructure for a parallel worldwide communications network with extremely limited 'lawful intercept' [read: end-run around 4A] capability that is relatively easy for individuals to access yet very hard for any state actor to destroy.

The Constitution, and the human rights it enumerates, are really fucking extreme when you think about them for more than 5 seconds. It is good to possess those rights.

Elon Musk has the Voice of America, a fleet of privately-owned ICBMs (and the only company with the ability to produce them these days), and the infrastructure for a parallel worldwide communications network with extremely limited 'lawful intercept' [read: end-run around 4A] capability that is relatively easy for individuals to access yet very hard for any state actor to destroy.

And yet at any time, ten police officers can walk into the SpaceX headquarters, have him arrested with evidence the CIA can fake, and that’s that. And there’s nothing Musk could do about it. So where does the real power lie?

Look at how much of a change to the tone of politics buying Twitter had compared to starting Truth Social. Controlling the moderation strategy of the world’s most important social media company is (for short term politics at least) vastly more important than rockets or electric cars. Actual monetary profit is irrelevant.

I'll take the other end of the imminent musk imprisonment bet.

Relevant: From the Wall Street Journal: "Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin":

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.

The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.

At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said two people briefed on the request.

…

At the same time, the contacts also raise potential national-security concerns among some in the current administration, given Putin’s role as one of America’s chief adversaries.

Musk has forged deep business ties with U.S. military and intelligence agencies, giving him unique visibility into some of America’s most sensitive space programs. SpaceX, which operates the Starlink service, won a $1.8 billion classified contract in 2021 and is the primary rocket launcher for the Pentagon and NASA. Musk has a security clearance that allows him access to certain classified information.

…

The billionaire’s conversations with Putin and Kremlin officials highlight his increasing inclination to stretch beyond business and into geopolitics. He has met several times and talked business with Javier Milei of Argentina, as well as former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whom he defended in an acrimonious online debate.

Putin is on a different order of magnitude. The Russian leader has created an authoritarian system that oversees fraudulent elections and the assassinations of political opponents, for which President Biden called him a “killer.” With keys to one of the world’s most powerful nuclear arsenals and growing territorial ambitions in Europe, Putin has become the U.S.’s chief antagonist.

…

In the past year, Musk and Russia’s interests have increasingly overlapped. Apart from Russia’s use of X for disinformation and Musk’s outspoken opposition to aid to Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said earlier this year that Russian forces occupying the country’s eastern and southern swaths had started using Starlink to enable secure communications and extend the range of their drones.

…

Earlier this year, Musk gave airtime to Putin and his views on the U.S. and Ukraine when X carried Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with the Russian leader inside the Kremlin. In that interview, Putin said he was sure Musk “was a smart person.”

There's also a lot in there about Musk and the Trump campaign — subtly implying, but never outright alleging, "Russian Collusion 2.0" with Elon as middleman. But I'm getting a definite "he could be leaking US secrets to Putin" vibe from it. Possible groundwork for espionage charges?

Every communication between Musk and Putin is obviously monitored and everyone knows it on all sides.

One must imagine Kamala as a protagonist in a horror film, emptying magazine after magazine into the monster's chest to no avail, before finally throwing the empty gun at the creature in a last, desperate act of defiance before being torn to pieces.

A Hitler is many things, but being a fry cook at McDonalds is not one of them.

You replied to the wrong comment.

It’s literally the boy who cried Nazi wolf.

They’ve been trying these attacks against Trump for almost 10 years now. They just don’t work anymore.

Trump has thousands and thousands of hours of himself talking available online for anybody to listen to. The reality is that he’s a pretty nice, relatively normal, above average charming person. He spent most of his life as a NYC socialite so this should surprise absolutely nobody.

They just don’t work anymore.

As means of persuading voters? Probably not. As justification for taking extraordinary measures to "defend democracy"? Perhaps — particularly as a means of justifying to themselves resorting to unprecedented levels of electoral fraud (or even just having the "official results" be, shall we say, rectally-sourced?)

I am still waiting for one more Tim Walz thing to drop. It probably wont be anything, but he has to be the least vetted major party candidate of my lifetime. He's just a walking mediocrity who has convinced himself via self delusion that everything hes ever done is slightly more impressive than it actually was, or something along those lines. So I expect one more really dumb thing about Walz to come out. Like that he actually quit the track team in high school, but insists he lettered.

There's his CCP ties, but I don't think Americans care. Unless he's the perpetrator of a snuff film, I don't think anyone gets shocked anymore.

I’ve seen rumors on Twitter that he is gay and has had inappropriate relations with teens. My guess is that there is no strong evidence or it would have come out by now.

The whole Elmer Fudd thing was pretty bad though.

I doubt he has done anything truly bad, but he does strike me as the kind of teacher that decides to break out a bunch of booze on the trip to China so everyone thinks he is cool.

Some morons tried to fake a video of one of his past students alleging abuse, though it was even less credible than the "Trump grope Time Paradox" story. Even in the unlikely event a real one did come forward, at this point there would be genuine skepticism.

Most of it's just pointing to some goofy mannerisms, or needing not!IVF to have a kid. The latter is not how being gay works, or how getting a woman pregnant works, though.

The best evidence for Tim Walz being gay or harassing kids is his familiarity with the word "cosplay".

He has kids born in the early 2000s, why would that be unexpected? Tons of parents know what rizz, fortnite, skibidi etc are for the same reason.

What does skibidi mean?

it's a reference to skibidi toilet, an absurdist source filmmaker meme animation popular with the youth.

Far out! Rock on, my homie.

Ah yes. See, back in my day stupid Gmod animations actually had to earn your view, rather than just "lol, put the citizen's head in the toilet".

Seeing people's limbs completely spaz out will never not be funny though.

There are some rumblings on Twitter about a tape (A TAPE) coming out tomorrow that will be highly damaging to Trump. The speculations about what it is... him groping a donor's preteen daughter, something with Ghislaine Maxwell, maybe the Russian pee tape finally?

I guess, if you're going to release a video at the last minute to sway the election, might as well go all out and put all of it in it hoping something sticks.

maybe the Russian pee tape finally?

I this is real, and part of me hopes it is just for entertainment value, I think it might actually give him a bump.

Especially if it turns out to be really hot.

"Make no mistake, I have the best piss tapes -- have you seen Kamala's? Horrible, just horrible -- mine are the best, just really really hot"

The thing is, there is no "last minute" anymore. There are many states where millions of people have already cast their votes. I'm not a huge fan of the consequence of this system where we now have to maintain a proper chain-of-custody for week after week after week, but I am a huge fan of the consequence of this system where anyone with an "October Surprise" in their pocket might as well release it in September, because if you release it late then any "voters don't have time to think past their gut reaction" advantage gets canceled out by "it doesn't even get to all the voters".

This is more along the lines of what I expected. The “grab them ***” video was damaging.

The election will ultimately be decided by people’s emotional reactions to videos.

Don't forget the other October surprise of ex-model Stacy Williams accusing Trump of groping her back in 1993. That one seemed to fizzle out real quick.

Didn't even see that, lol.

I wonder why Trump's campaign doesn't try similar shit. Just make up some fake story about Harris. I'm sure there is something that would play which would keep Harris voters home on election day. So either he doesn't think it would work or he actually has more integrity than people give him credit for.

Didn't even see that, lol.

I wouldn't have, but was somehow induced to click through on #KamalaGropedMe on Twitter this morning.

Bad on purpose, made me click -- a bunch of dudes sarcastically ridiculing waiting 20 years to claim sexual assault two weeks before the election by inventing stories about being fondled by #DrunkKamala.

I don't expect votes to be swayed either way.

What I don’t get is exactly how they thought a story first released in 2021, and that was debunked back then was supposed to move the needle. Not only is it old news, but the “my enemy is literally Hitler” game goes back to at least George W Bush. As an October Surprise, this is a nothing burger and the people pushing this narrative knew that. I suspect they have some other stories that this is softening the ground to build for.

Vague theory, this is what they see as the best way to motivate their own people to vote.

The most fear-inducing message they can muster, timed to help maximize turnout.

Not an attack on Trump, a rallying cry for their voters.

The most fear-inducing message is the one they’ve used on every major Republican candidate for the last 24 years? I mean even as motivation it’s weak. And it’s not even a revelation as Harris had already been running ads to that effect.

Yes, it keeps working on their people, is the point.

“my enemy is literally Hitler” game goes back to at least George W Bush.

I'm guessing this goes back to at least 1932.

While it was normal for communists to call everyone fascists in the 1920's (Social Democrats were 'social fascists'), the earliest I know of was Truman comparing Dewey to Mussolini.

Sorry, my reply was a bit of a joke as Hitler ran for president in 1932, placing second.

Admittedly, "my enemy is literally Hitler" wasn't as useful of an attack back then.

There's a certain power that comes from knowing how everyone will react, and this drives a lot of things.

I keep coming back to the David Cameron PigGate scandal; there's a high chance it never happened to start with, the actual claimed behavior was little more than goofy fratboy jokes, but the initial book ran on a legal hack (Ashcroft reported only being told of the story) making it dangerous to contest under UK defamation law, while literally everybody up to the BBC could euphemistically reframe it to something far more serious, and everyone under that illustrious bar could reduce it to "Cameron fucked a pig".

It's establishing the room temperature.

See also the breathlessly-reported Epstein Connection (with a time paradox in the allegations) or a Trump Hates Vets (anonymously sourced, disputed by the family of the deceased vet in question).

Yeah, the media is constantly smashing the "damage Trump, hurt own credibility" button. They need to spend some years building up their political capital. The account so overdrawn they can't even damage Trump anymore, all they can do is further damage their own credibility.

I kind of agree here which is what makes this move so baffling. They know they’re not going to affect the outcome with this move, and they know that this kind of stupid reporting is only going to hurt their credibility. As it stands now, if the GOP candidate for 2028 were actually a Nazi, the credibility of the idea has been shot so badly that even if Candidate 2028 says “killing an entire ethnic group is actually a good idea,” who’s still listening? Very very people are still paying attention to the mainstream media as a source of information, and of those who are, it’s often as a sideline to looking for the same information from other sources less compromised by ideological capture. I don’t really pay attention to it. I don’t know of very many others who unironically believe anything coming out of a mainstream media outlet.

After all of the things done, and not even done well (I.e. the blatant edits of Kamala’s answers on 60 minutes), and in a biased way, I don’t see how any of these old journals can regain credibility. A “journalist” at this point is an ideological hack, unconcerned with accuracy, credibility, or neutrality. The mask is gone, and it’s almost impossible to restore the trust that they once enjoyed. For me, the only value in reading the NYT or watching mainstream news is to find out what the cathedral wants me to believe. Its value is in that area, but it’s no longer even directionally relevant or accurate.

I tend to think that analysis of why the media behaves the way that they do can't be separated from the Internet sucking all of the money out of advertising. The days of major news media sources paying generous salaries for skilled, intelligent investigators with deep knowledge of some beat and at least some sense of ethics are gone, maybe forever, with the drive to the bottom for advertising money.

The only thing that brings in enough money to keep the doors open is clickbait-level reporting and commentary catering to whatever the current audience wants to believe. Anyone not prepared to do that mostly gets driven out, since there's damn little money for anyone else. Even the ownership seems to be mostly people who primarily want to either protect themselves from too-harsh criticism or use them as a weapon to attack their enemies, and so is willing to accept losses or much lower profits than a disinterested investor would expect.

The days of major news media sources paying generous salaries for skilled, intelligent investigators with deep knowledge of some beat and at least some sense of ethics are gone, maybe forever, with the drive to the bottom for advertising money.

I think skill/intelligence/expertise and having at least some sense of ethics are somewhat different with respect to salary levels. Certainly, it's easier to be ethical if you're well compensated, but I don't think having at least some sense of ethics when doing journalism requires some generous salary that is beyond the capabilities of these companies to pay now, and plenty of not-very-well compensated journalists (and other workers in general) can be and have been known to behave with at least some sense of ethics. If the lower budget to pay salaries means compromising on skills, intelligence, expertise, and ethics, among other things, they could have decided compromise less on ethics at the cost of compromising on other things, so that their journalists would have at least some sense of ethics, even if they weren't up to the same level of skill, intelligence, or deep knowledge of some beat as the other options.

Even the ownership seems to be mostly people who primarily want to either protect themselves from too-harsh criticism or use them as a weapon to attack their enemies, and so is willing to accept losses or much lower profits than a disinterested investor would expect.

I do think this is likely the biggest factor. It's hard to say exactly what determines how ethical any given journalist or individual in general would behave, but I think the leadership and company culture likely has a lot of influence, moreso than the budgets available for salaries.

I kind of agree here which is what makes this move so baffling. They know they’re not going to affect the outcome with this move, and they know that this kind of stupid reporting is only going to hurt their credibility.

Do they? What's the evidence that they're aware of the fact that this kind of thing would hurt their credibility? I remember as far back as 2016 during Trump's first campaign, I was among a tiny minority of Democrats complaining that there are more than enough honest ways to criticize and denigrate Trump, and that constantly reaching for hyperbole or even just lies would only hurt our ability to make any criticisms of him and other politicians in the future. We were shut down for "tone policing" or just ignored, and, sure enough, over the following 4 years of his presidency and continuing for 4 years after that, we've seen the trust in media keep going down. And the explanation for this has always been adding more epicycles about disinformation, Russian propaganda, low-information voters, and the like, instead of just owning up to the fact that when you don't speak credibly, your credibility declines in the eyes of the audience. At some point, when someone just keeps making the same obvious mistake over and over again that harms them, one has to conclude that, somehow, that mistake isn't that obvious or even understood by the person.

I also have to wonder if there's an evaporative cooling going on, where journalists who could recognize the constant self-destructive behavior of self-inflicted injuries to credibility that much of mainstream media engages in quit and did their own thing, and thus the ones remaining are only the most deluded ones.

I think there's a phenomenon where, once an industry goes left, it goes all the way left. In the 1970s something like 40% of journalists were Republicans. Today it is like 4%.

Somewhere along the line, a tipping point got crossed where it becomes almost impossible to be right of center in a newsroom due to social pressure.

We've seen the same thing happen in academia and primary school teaching as well. A tipping point is reached, the institutions become explicit left-wing organs, and they lose public trust.

It's unclear how this process can reverse. We probably need to defund and replace the institutions. X is doing a great job of doing that for journalists.

Well, I know there's some sort of "law" some political commentator coined, that says that any organization that's not explicitly right wing eventually becomes left wing. There are certainly enough examples that calling it a "law" doesn't seem obviously ridiculous.

The part I don't understand quite so well is why it happens to such an extreme extent like that 40% - 4% shift you say happened in journalism. From a purely cynical, selfish perspective, knowing the opposition better allows one to defeat them better - there's even a cliche saying, "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer," that alludes to this. So if I'm cynically running a left-wing organization in order to crush the right-wing, then I'm going to want to populate it with at least enough right-wingers that we can learn from. From a good faith perspective of wanting to make the world a better place through leftist values and policies, it's obvious that blind spots develop when you're surrounded by people with similar values and beliefs. So if I'm a bright-eyed idealist running a left-wing organization in order to improve the world, then I'm going to want to populate it with at least enough right-wingers to provide real, substantive criticism of the weaknesses and pitfalls of our values that I and people who agree with me can't recognize.

Which leads me to conclude that there are no real adults in the room, and everyone's just cynically aiming for the betterment of their own careers and status among peers, and if that results in their organization becoming ineffective or evil, then, well, hopefully that'll be after they've retired and the younger generations can deal with that.

This is the thought I had from seeing a related phenomenon in the field of entertainment, where over the past couple years, we've seen companies burn 8-10 figures in producing works like the films Indiana Jones 5 or The Marvels, TV shows Rings of Power or The Acolyte, video games Concord, Star Wars: Outlaws, or Unknown 9: Awakening. I would have expected that the cynical selfish greedy decisionmakers at the top would have put a stop to it before all that money was sunk. But, well, it's not like it's their money - it's their investors' money - and even if they were to get fired, they at least gained status among their peers by greenlighting such things. That's the best I've come up with.

Well, I know there's some sort of "law" some political commentator coined, that says that any organization that's not explicitly right wing eventually becomes left wing.

Conquest's Law(s): https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/conquests-laws-john-derbyshire/

So if I'm cynically running a left-wing organization in order to crush the right-wing, then I'm going to want to populate it with at least enough right-wingers that we can learn from.

Sure, but there's two things working against you. First is the reason that many people who genuinely want to be thin are nevertheless fat: lack of will power to not do what feels good in the moment. You may recognize fully that you need some conservatives on staff, and go out and recruit them, and nonetheless find that you simply don't have the will power to stand up for them when they (and you by proxy) are attacked by your allies, or even to grant them with a similar level of respect and authority that you would give to your allies. So, they end up leaving for less hostile environments, as would be totally expected.

The other is the principal-agent problem. You may want conservative on your staff, you may even be a conservative yourself, but if enough of your staff are willing to actually torpedo your organization and are credibly able to do so, you may find that your hand is forced and that your only options are a completely left organization or none at all. In this sense, the left engages in some union-adjacent workplace activity to effectively force a closed shop. Once you're in this situation, it's going to be very difficult to get out without replacing almost your entire staff and also countering their efforts at sabotage in the process, a difficult task even before we consider the effects of solidarity from other left media institutions.

I kind of agree here which is what makes this move so baffling. They know they’re not going to affect the outcome with this move, and they know that this kind of stupid reporting is only going to hurt their credibility.

If it doesn't make sense, and they keep doing it, and the disastrous results keep not happening, then perhaps your model is wrong. I think the part you've got wrong is thinking that their stupid reporting will hurt their credibility. Their credibility does not derive from them telling the truth. It derives from being credible institutions endorsed by credible institutions. Since the people behind them in fact control all the credible institutions, as long as they keep toeing the party line they will not lose credibility.

But it’s not exactly right. If you’re in a fact-selling business, being right is at least a small part of credibility. Which is why they’re failing as the source of information for the rabble who no longer believe what’s on 60 minutes and in the NYT or the mainstream press. And where that ends up is these “credible sources” can no longer see their purpose and therefore are abandoned. How can they be trusted enough to indoctrinate the masses when the masses are choosing alternatives and not taking American Pravda seriously? Samsdat is accurate at least, and that accuracy isn’t fake. It’s like the loudspeakers in North Korea. They were giving accurate forecasts of the weather, so people listened to them over the government news.

But it’s not exactly right. If you’re in a fact-selling business, being right is at least a small part of credibility.

Then they're not in a fact-selling business, because it isn't. Even if they were, their readers will never check the facts.

Which is why they’re failing as the source of information for the rabble who no longer believe what’s on 60 minutes and in the NYT or the mainstream press. And where that ends up is these “credible sources” can no longer see their purpose and therefore are abandoned.

No. Where that ends is pretty much here, where a majority still believe the NYT and 60 minutes and such, and some minority believes instead in Fox News and the Daily Caller. Eventually the majority group will take over Fox and bring some subset of the minority back into the fold.

Why are average people reading news then? I mean I can sort of get why aperachniks are reading American Pravda rags, but again, as a useful activity, a person reading the news would be looking for accuracy on things that matter to them. As it becomes more obvious to average people that a given source isn’t accurate, then it’s really only useful to the choir as the point of them reading and watching news is to know what to say in dinner parties or business talk or whatever. NYT might be useful for that, but if most people now see a NYT article as simply skimping for wokeness and global order and so on, it’s not going to convince them of anything. In fact, it would probably do the opposite— if NYT starts telling me about civilian deaths in Gaza, my first thought is “Israel must have gotten an important target.” Beyond a certain point, obvious propaganda starts pushing people in the wrong direction from the POV of the writers.

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I watched most of the seasons of West Wing so I think I'm qualified to say this. What the Harris team was trying to do is called "winning the news cycle".

Of course, they win every news cycle these days. The other team just took their ball and went home.

Somewhere, there might be an 80 year old boomer who opens his Detroit Free Press paper as he has done every day for the last 50 years, sees the Hitler story and has his vote flipped from R to D. But I doubt it.

I suspect they have some other stories that this is softening the ground to build for.

Time is running out! If they do have something, it has to come out in the next couple days. And I don't think some "51 former intelligence officers" shit is going to do it. They better have video.

I noticed the odds fluctuating slightly, but had no idea that this was why. This is a very lame attempt. They’ve already been calling Trump Hitler for 8 years. Why would it finally stick?

Hitler is rapidly becoming irrelevant anyway. You might as well say Attila the Hun did some good things.

They’ve already been calling Trump Hitler for 8 years. Why would it finally stick?

Indeed. I remember probably as far back as 2016, and certainly by 2018, joking that Democrats were calling Trump "Giga-Hitler" was considered trite. I don't know whether to even believe that this is something that counts as an "October surprise" due to how banal this is. If it's an actual attempt at a coordinated smearing, it speaks to an incredible level of incompetence in the Democratic party and its media supporters. A level of incompetence so great that I wouldn't have believed that it was possible until this year. Unfortunately, after what I've seen this year, it actually seems depressingly plausible that the top decisionmakers for a movement that believes that this election will literally determine life and death of democracy in America, thought that this would be an effective tactic.

a movement that believes that this election will literally determine life and death of democracy in America, thought that this would be an effective tactic.

Again, if they really believe it's a matter of "life and death of democracy in America," why would they limit themselves to just trying to win the election with this — as opposed to using it as laying groundwork for exceptional measures after the election.

Because the other side gets a say in extraordinary measures too.

it speaks to an incredible level of incompetence in the Democratic party and its media supporters.

True, it's pretty stupid. But the ability to get the same story published in every single mainstream media publication on the same day is an amazing demonstration of power. Imagine what a competent actor could do with that power.

One to watch in the betting markets: Virginia.

Beyond the 7 swing states, there really isn't an 8th state that is within easy reach for Trump. Virginia is the closest with a 17% Trump chance.

But, if the election fraud claims are true, Virginia could break a lot more towards Trump than many expect. The Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, has taken a lot of common sense actions to prevent voter fraud. It would be very strange and interesting if Virginia went for Trump while Michigan, Wisconsin, or other "fortified" states went for Harris. Michigan in particular is an interesting case. Supposedly the state has more registered voters than eligible voters.

So a sell Michigan, buy Virginia trade might make sense.

Whatever happens, I think Trump's support in Virginia/Michigan will say a lot about the election fraud claims.

https://x.com/GlennYoungkin/status/1849826145258148113

A federal judge decided VA must allow non citizens to vote. This election is going to be fortified so hard.

The judgement is a fairly uncomplicated application of section c2 of 52 USC 20507 (the National Voter Registration Act) which says that you have to complete voter roll purges at least 90 days before the election. The idea is to ensure that legal voters purged by mistake (based on media coverage, it looks like this is about 1% of the people affected in this case) have plenty of time to re-register.

If Youngkin is going to make a big deal out of this, he should explain why he failed to meet a statutory deadline, given that the election date was known in advance, as was the desirability of removing non-citizens from the rolls.

Because you can register to vote up to 21 days before the election in VA. What good does it do to purge the voter rolls of non citizens 90 days out, and no later, when they can register for another 69 (nice) days?

Next question.

That was literally just explained, so that citizens have time to catch that they have been removed and be added back on. It's that part you just said about fortifying the election, only unironically.

If Youngkin objects to the law, he should lobby for its repeal. Instead he went ahead and did something he's not allowed to do and got smacked down. It turns out you can't just ignore laws you don't like.

Laws that make it illegal to catch criminals should be ignored.

The feds have also been allegedly derping around with providing states immigration status for alternative methods for enforcing laws against noncitizen voting.


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